


and get him to swap our places

by Mici (noharlembeat)



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: AU, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Overly wordy prose, Violence against bees, complete disregard for canon, teenage angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-11
Updated: 2012-05-11
Packaged: 2017-11-05 04:03:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy casts the most dubious of spells and gets into a shitload of trouble when he switches places with William Lensherr, Prince of Genosha, member of the House of M.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and get him to swap our places

**Author's Note:**

> There's artwork that accompanies this! Please go check it out http://skip-this.tumblr.com/post/23149480840/i-participated-in-the-young-avengers-big-bang and http://skip-this.tumblr.com/post/23149456325/the-second-pic-for-the-ya-big-bang! It's amazing and fantastic!

The problem with magic, Billy decides, is that he’s pretty sure it has motives of its own. Sure, there’s simple magic, like summoning blue lightning, and flying, and occasionally making deep-fried oreos appear (although the question of ‘are these actually nutritionally valid’ is one that he and the team have yet to answer, as the only member who is capable of gaining weight at a normal human rate refuses to eat them) but then there’s complicated magic, the kind of magic that is certainly harder than anything Harry Potter ever did, or would even be remotely capable of.

That’s probably why Billy tries to keep most of his activity in battles to flying around, raining down lightning, and occasionally airlifting the team when they need support. The simple fact of it remains that as much as Billy would like to be a badass one-man army, his magic is just too unpredictable to toss around. 

“Wiccan, backup!” Kate’s voice is remarkably good at cutting through the din of people running (mostly because they’re not screaming: the populace knows that if they’re going to accept living in New York City, they also have to accept the fact that they’re going to have to run from crazed supervillains and occasionally Nazis made of bees, as is the case now) and Billy can see that whatever it is that’s going on down there, everyone’s a little bit lost. He tries another bolt of lightning, but apparently Swarm’s figured out that trick, because he manages to roll just out of the way.

“Victor said that would work!” Billy says, his cape flailing behind him as he swirls down, flying to a level where he’s in better screaming at Kate range. 

“We don’t have time for this,” Eli _howls_. It never fails to impress Billy how he morphs from mild mannered scowling librarian to full-on screaming captain of a group of unruly teenagers. “ _Wiccan!_ Focus!”

Out of the corner of his eye Billy can see Swarm’s attention has turned to him – he’s dissolved from his usual human-shape and he’s reforming into a Heinkel Fighter plane, and Billy spends a moment of disbelief when he thinks that he’s _fighting an airplane made of Nazi bees, what is his life_ before he realizes that the bullets that the plane is firing at him are actually _bees_ , and in a short burst of panic Billy yells out, “Crap, _get out of the way!_ ”

The blue haze of his magic is heavy for a second as the unintended spell ricochets through the air, slamming Billy down onto the pavement on his back with only his cape and cowl to absorb the shock. He registers the pain of the slam and then Teddy’s cry of, “Billy, _Billy!_ ” and he’s blinking up at his boyfriend’s face. “Are you okay? What just happened?”

Billy tries to speak but he’s winded by the fall and the slamming into the asphalt, so instead he blinks and tries to convey his pain while asking if Swarm is gone. Tommy helpfully pokes him in the stomach, like Billy is some kind of broken toy, and Billy manages to wheeze out a protest. “He was shot by a bee-bee gun,” Tommy announces, and the entire team groans. Kate whacks him helpfully.

“Swarm’s gone,” Eli offers with a gruff kind of smile. “That was some serious magic, there, Wiccan,” he adds with a touch of _I’m proud but if I say it then it will go to your head and also I don’t talk about feelings_ in his voice.

Billy offers another wheeze as some kind of weak thank-you, and Teddy looks more and more worried by the second. He presses one enormous, clawed green hand against Billy’s face, and Tommy recoils. “Come _on_ ,” he mutters, “isn’t it bad enough I get this at home?”

Kate pulls Tommy away. “Come on, Speed,” she says. “We have cleanup to do.”

Once the rest of the team pulls away, Teddy leans in closer, encasing Billy in a tent of green leathery wings. It’s an odd moment of privacy in the middle of the street. “Did you break any ribs? Hit your head? What was that spell anyway?”

Billy huffs, air finally agreeing to make nice with his lungs, and he breathes out, “I don’t know, I didn’t even mean to cast one,” he says, managing to sit up. Teddy moves with him, giving him more space to sit up, and Billy mentally checks off the painful spots in his body. “It just came out all blue and magic-y.”

“Oh,” Teddy says, his face still pinched with worry. “That doesn’t really sound very good, Bill,” he adds after a minute, his eyes looking over every inch of Billy’s spandex clad form as if he can see where bruises are forming.

Billy doesn’t want to say that it freaks him out, because if he says it, he’ll have to admit that the thought of casting spells when in an accidental panic about being shot out of the air by bee Nazis freaked him out, and that’s just sad. He doesn’t want to talk about how suddenly the world went blue and how the spell seemed a lot more complicated than just expelling Swarm from the area. He doesn’t want to say any of it because admitting that his magic has a mind of its own means that on some level, when Tony Stark arrested him and asked him to register, Iron Man was _in the right_ , even though he’s only sixteen and making mistakes is usually what people do at this age.

 _Most people’s mistakes don’t potentially destroy the fabric of reality_ , his brain supplies oh-so-helpfully. Billy hopes that the thought doesn’t manifest on his face, because even his worst thoughts aren’t usually quite so dismal. Instead he shrugs. “It was an accident,” he says, and Teddy’s eyes flick up to his face, stilling there for a long moment. “Really, Ted. I’m okay. I just need like a really hot shower and possibly my own weight in fried foods.” Another moment, another breath that feels like his lungs are going to start a war with his ribs, and Billy tries again. “Seriously.”

“Okay,” Teddy says, putting his hands on Billy’s back to help support him into a standing position, and his hands linger against Billy’s waist for a moment longer than they normally would, the touch warm and welcome there. “You okay to take us home?”

Billy thinks about it for a second, and nods his head. “Yeah, I guess so. Is Tommy coming?” 

Teddy looks up for away from Billy for long enough for both of them to catch the speedster and Kate together, heads bent close. Eli is somewhere else for the moment, and Billy feels that odd pang, the pang that he sometimes gets when Tommy’s life is teetering dangerously close to some kind of emotionally turbulent moment. While the first time it happened he had attributed it to heartburn, now he knows exactly what it means. The look on his brother’s face is happy, dopey and open for once, a look that Billy knows his own face produces whenever he’s alone with Teddy. “Nah. He knows how to get home.”

Teddy nods, turning his gaze back to Billy, and yells out, “Hey, guys, I’m taking Bill home, I’ll see you later!”

There seems to be a general consensus between the rest of the team, and Billy mutters, and they are surrounded by the usual flash of blue light. Perhaps it’s the routine of it that makes it such a comfortable trap, because when usually the dim but familiar light of Billy’s computer monitor is what greets them, this time it’s only the sure dark of sleep.

\---------

“You’re not feeling well.” Thomas sounds absolutely sure of this fact, his white eyebrows rising up to frame his green eyes in the only expression of concern that William is sure his twin can muster up. “If I have to call the doctor and ruin our trip to New York so that you can spend our time holed up in the penthouse suite of the hotel I will never forgive you.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” William manages, because it’s true, something _does_ feel just a little off. “It makes you sound like Uncle, and you already have that _spitting image_ problem.” It’s not really a headache, he decides as he speaks. It’s more like an ache in his magic, if that’s even possible. For what is possibly the first time ever, William wishes that someone in his family shared his particular genetic gift, if only so he could question exactly what was going on. “I won’t ruin your precious trip,” he adds, moving smoothly through the penthouse that they’re sharing for reasons that William isn’t altogether sure of. 

It’s not like it will matter. Thomas will find a girl who will let him slum with her, completely allowing him to live some vicarious fantasy that he is _one of the people_ , or at the very least he’ll enjoy pretending that he can sleep in a place that doesn’t have a maid service for a few nights, giving William the kind of privacy that he enjoys. 

Thomas slumps in a chair, his perfectly cut and tailored suit taking on wrinkles right away. “Don’t say that as though you aren’t looking forward to having fun,” he says. “Diplomatic events like this one are always more fun for you than they ever are for me,” he points out and props his feet up on an ottoman. 

William twists his shoulders back, the itch in his magic getting stronger. It buzzes against his skull, rotating there, ricocheting between his eyes and pinging back into the base of his neck like some kind of suicidal mosquito. “It’s just a few days,” he reminds his twin. 

“A few days of pretending to be interested in what Americans want,” Thomas wrinkles his nose. “A few days of kissing up to the pro-human agenda, as if anyone really cares what normies want.” He scoffs. “Can’t we just make them recall the Emancipation Declaration already?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” William says patiently, calmly. Enslaving all of humankind was definitely not his Grandfather’s agenda, and it wasn’t even Thomas’ agenda. “You’re not going to shock me into feeling less awful,” he says, opening the door to his bedroom. The room is tastefully decorated and the bed is large enough for an orgy. His eyes flicker around the room and there’s a dance of blue lights, sudden and sharp, and things from home suddenly surround him; his favorite painting, a photograph of his mother, and the only pillow he likes to sleep on. 

“If you’re going to do that can you just conjure me up a girl? Preferably blonde, 32DD.” Thomas’ voice cuts through the concentration of magic, and while it’s not exactly a shock, it’s not helping the itch either. In fact, doing the magic, bringing things that are his, is suddenly making things worse. “Actually if you can make her a natural redhead, that would be fantastic.”

“Get your own girls,” William snaps, and the ensuing silence is deafening and uncomfortable. “Thomas?” he says, turning around, because suddenly he feels very alone, and he decides he doesn’t like it. When they’re apart, bad things happen.

“You’re really not feeling well,” Thomas says, and his eyes are going from the door to William’s face. “You don’t usually snap at something so stupid,” he adds, as if William doesn’t know that, as if William is _stupid_. But Thomas isn’t saying that for William, he’s saying it for himself, and his hands are on his twin’s forearms, the touch soothing and familiar. “Get some sleep,” he says. “Maybe the flight was a bad idea. Maybe we should have teleported.”

They both know that teleportation wasn’t possible because this was an official visit, so an official entry was polite, and also because it displayed all the military might of Genosha: the royal twins arriving in full pomp and circumstance, surrounded by guards and staff and allowing the American media to get their fill, but they would have both preferred to arrive under their own power. Thomas hated flying in airplanes because he could always get there faster if he ran, and William hated the interminable feeling, the noise, the dryness, the bleary exhaustion that always seemed to greet him at his destination, no matter how luxurious the plane was. William could never sleep on planes.

The idea is appealing, he has to admit, that whatever this infection in his magic is, it’s related to flying in an airplane. If that’s the case than he has a position to argue for never flying in an airplane, luxurious or not, again. His Grandfather might not listen to wishes but he’ll pay attention when the health of his grandsons and their powers are suddenly brought into question. 

He flips his hands with a certain easy grace to grip his twins, and they press their foreheads together for an instant, a tiny, private show of affection, and he feels some tension release. “I’ll get some sleep,” he says, and Thomas’ breath is his own for a brief moment. 

“Do you want me to get someone in to keep you warm?” he asks, separating just as smoothly when the door clicks warning that one of the bodyguards is about to come in. They look, then, for all the world like two bored teenagers, twins in face and body, casually exploring a fancy hotel room in the fanciest hotel in New York City. 

“You have terrible taste in men,” William points out, and Rictor rolls his eyes as he surveys the room once, because it’s just the sort of thing that the twins usually say to irritate him, or at least to try and shock him, but he’s known them their whole lives and William knows he’s impossible to shock. “I’ll take this nap without company, thank you.”

Once the door closes and he changes, he barely makes it onto his bed before sleep catches him between the eyes like a bullet to the brain.

When William wakes up he feels the warmth of another body curled around him, larger than him, and insistent erection pressed against this thigh. It takes him a moment to get his bearings: this is, after all, not such an unusual event in his life, but he doesn’t remember sex let alone authorizing someone to sleep in his bed. 

New York. That explains the unfamiliar bed, at least, but he makes a note that this hotel has terrible sheets, and while it only takes a thought and a flash of blue to turn get his Egyptian cotton ones, it’s more energy than he feels like expending at the moment. His fingers, instead, run over his bedmate’s stomach. The definition makes him expand his fingertips to his entire hand flat against the other man’s abs as he remembers Thomas offering to send him someone up. His twin has offered things like that before, but mostly to be annoying, not because he actually meant it. This is new; William isn’t sure if he likes it, but he’s comfortable pressing his hand against this man, because at the very least it’s a nice sensation.

The man is waking up now, stirring. “Hey, you woke up,” the other man says, his voice deep and pleasant but entirely unfamiliar. His voice is heavy with emotion, and that’s unexpected. Maybe he’s just waking up and that’s the tone he takes, but it’s something that’s never happened before. It’s new and curious and William leans up to trace the angles of the man’s face. The darkness isn’t complete, and he can see his own hands, and the soft bump of a nose, the slight shock of hair that’s light enough to be just visible in the darkness. 

The man’s lips brush against his hands when they move over his mouth in something between a kiss and a prayer. It feels right, appropriate, so William leans up and kisses the other man on the mouth, pressing his whole body up against this stranger, unconcerned. Strong arms wrap around him, and the kiss is intimate, familiar, odd. It feels different from other kisses he’s shared with men before, it feels hotter and more passionate, a kiss that William hasn’t had since… _ever_ , actually, and he backs up out of it, his breathing flush. It’s everything that a kiss should be, and it enrages him. Who is this person? How dare he be so familiar? 

The question is stillborn, however, when the man chases him for another kiss, his mouth wandering low, his hands wandering lower, and William decides that he can hold onto the anger at the presumption until afterwards, that his quickly rising cock is more demanding than his need for respect. He feels a sense of relaxed calm wash over him as the other man’s hand grips him, tugging on his erection just the way that he likes, at the precise speed he enjoys. 

It doesn’t hit him until after he’s come, until after his own hands coax an orgasm out of the man in the dark (because no matter what Tommy says, he’s not selfish, not when it comes to sex), that this man knows exactly how he likes it. He knows about all the right touches and caresses, about just how to use pressure towards the end to make it longer. He’s had masturbation sessions that weren’t so intensely intimate, so perfectly tailored to his own pleasures, and he’s certainly never had sex with one man for so long as to develop the kind of bond necessary for that kind of touch, that kind of perfect response to his feelings.

“Is it a power?”

The question feels sudden in the dark, furtive, soft, not because anyone might be listening but just because it feels _right_. The man laughs a little, relaxed and low. “Is this some kind of Power Ranger-related reference I should be teasing you about or something?”

William remembers the Power Rangers, vaguely, as something that came from Japan but his grandfather didn’t really let him watch. “You know exactly how to touch me,” William elaborates, not addressing the fact that he was just asked if he referenced some old Japanese television show. 

The man’s voice is suddenly soft, and the emotion in it isn’t hard to decipher. It’s how his family speaks to his mother, smooth and tender, like she’s something precious, something to protect. It’s how Alex speaks to his Aunt Lorna when they think that there aren’t listening ears, but there always are in Genosha. It’s private and rich and loving, and most of all, it’s disturbingly intimate. “I think they call that practice, you know.”

The last thing that William wants is someone in love with him. Love is complicated and messy and leaves a trail that paparazzi love to follow straight to the most unpleasant conclusions. It’s all well and good for Thomas to have flings with girls who are inappropriate and celebrities who just want to vacation in Genosha, but that isn’t how William is. William is kingly material. “You should leave,” he says, the cold dripping into his voice.

There’s silence, long and paralyzing, and then the voice cracks above him. “What?”

William is getting up, his feet hitting the floor, and he’s feeling for Thomas; his twin’s presence is nearby, comforting, re-establishing who he is just by his sheer presence. “I’m really not in the mood anymore,” William says, but hands reach for his waist, placating, and he feels the rage he was holding back swell up again. “Don’t _touch_ me,” he warns, but before he can explode any power at this _person_ , the door slams open.

“ _Jesus_ Christ put some clothes on!” Thomas’ voice is a balm, identical to his but a little bit faster, making it sound higher pitched than it actually is.

William looks down and stares for an instant at himself, undone over the band of his pajamas – and he’s positive he has never owned pajamas made of flannel, and if he did, they wouldn’t be on his body when he had a perfectly good extra body to keep him warm. He tries to puzzle it out, and when he can’t he asks, “Why am I wearing these?”

The man – boy, he’s a boy, William decides, now that he can see him in the dim light, is too busy yelling at Thomas - _yelling as though they were equals_ \- to notice William asking. “What the _hell_ , Tommy? Don’t you _knock_?”

“I felt like I was needed in here or something it was really strange also whatthehell- _penis_!” Thomas squawks, and William rolls his eyes and pulls his pants up over his cock. “What the hell is going on?”

“You act as though you’ve never seen it before,” William says, crossing his arms over his chest. There’s silence in the room for a measured beat, and William just repeats, “Why am I wearing these?”

“I put them on you when we got back, you just flopped over – why has Tommy seen your penis?” The boy asks, standing up from the bed, looking both confused and slightly repulsed. 

Thomas looks like he’s trying to do something between throwing up and catching his breath. “ _Dude_ ,” he says, and William is thrown by the sudden vernacular shift in his twin, “I have _never_ seen your penis before this, not _once_ , what the _hell_ , why would you _say_ that?”

William is starting to feel a cold panic come up over him. “What are you talking about?” he asks. “I’ve seen you naked more times than I can count. You’ve seen me naked all the time.” The silence is more pointed now, sharper, harsher. William is not afraid of silence and there is nothing inherently frightening about this one, except that it means that something is very, very wrong.

“Why does he keep saying that?” Thomas whines, flinging his hands in a gesture that is so unlike him that it makes the world narrow in William’s eyes. “Did he hit his head or something? Please tell me he hit his head.”

“What’s going on?” William’s voice is low, now, dangerous, the tone that Thomas should know, but he’s too busy staring in horror, and when William looks over at the boy – blonde, beautiful, just the kind of man that William likes – the boy’s face is worried. “I didn’t hit my head.”

“Billy, you’re kind of freaking me out.”

 _Billy_.

The familiarity of the name strikes William in his core. No one calls him Billy – no one except Rictor, sometimes, and only when William is in a good mood, when there’s no possible risk. Not even his mother calls him Billy, and certainly no one-night stand that Thomas dug up from somewhere.

The shock of it finally wakes William up enough that his eyes flash bright blue, and the other two occupants of the room take a quick, worried step back. “Bill, what-“

“Don’t _call_ me that.” The tone is soft and hissing, not yelling, but that’s the more dangerous. Pietro says that William is like a rattlesnake; the warning is not loud but it’s clear as a bell. “What is going on?” Suddenly he feels alone, separate, even though he can feel Thomas right there, it’s not the same. He can’t reach out to his twin. The lightning rod disconnected from the earth, it doesn’t work the way it should. 

“Bi-“ The boy starts, but he stops. He knows the warning, it’s clear as a bell. “Okay, okay. What do you want us to call you?”

William backs up into the bed, staring at the both of them. He knows his eyes are blue, bright and neon, he can see the reflected glow in the dim room, he can see his twin’s face mirror his own, except it’s not right, something’s wrong. He can see the bedroom, the one that isn’t his: there are action figures and a computer, scattered clothes, it’s small and cramped and it doesn’t belong to him. “William,” he says softly, trying to grip onto the vestiges of who he is, who is he without Thomas to overlap every atom of him, what is going on here? Who is this boy who knows him well enough to not only understand how he likes his pleasure, but to understand the sound of his warnings, to speak to him like that?

“William,” the boy says.

“Where am I?” William finally asks.

\-----

Billy nuzzles his face into his pillow, and tosses, and tosses again. Usually by this point Teddy’s already snuck into his room, and so it’s strange not to encounter the other body in his very cozy bed. He flings himself over again and braces himself, because even sleeping he knows that he’s just flung himself off the side of the bed, only this time all he encounters is more satin pillow. It’s not that smashing into pillow isn’t nice, but Billy is pretty sure that his pillows aren’t made out of satin, even in those dreams where he wins the lottery and buys the Avengers Mansion, refurbishes it and turns it into his private museum of Avengers goods (with Tony Stark memorably cut out of his fantasy) are his pillows made of satin.

“Teddddddy whass goin’ onnnnn,” he tries, because usually Teddy responds to that kind of thing. Teddy isn’t exactly a morning person either (they are both cranky messes until they get their coffee, at which point Teddy transforms into a happy, fluffy, squishy alien and Billy turns into a less messy crank) but they’ve slept together for long enough to know each other’s morning routines, and Teddy always cuddles in the morning when Billy starts to make noise.

This time, however, there is no cuddle: instead there’s just silence, and when Billy opens his eyes he finds himself on the edge of a bed that goes on for miles, and the shock is enough that he flips over and actually falls off this time, landing with a thud as his brain is too sleep addled to turn on the ‘flying’ portion. He vows for what is not the first time to practice that, and the enormous French doors to the room open a crack, and a woman dressed in a maid uniform peeks in. “Your highness?” she squeaks. “Would you like breakfast?”

Billy can’t do anything but stare, because there are no words that adequately sum up the situation. He and the maid stare at each other for a long time, each progressing moment making him feel more awkward and making her look more nervous. “Uh. I think I must have…oh, um, slept in the wrong bed,” he manages, as if that’s a good save for ‘teleported into the wrong bed,’ which is clearly what he did. There is just no other explanation for what is going on here. “Sorry?”

She keeps staring at him, and closes the door. Billy is pretty sure that isn’t anything good, so he stands up and assesses himself – he’s wearing a very rumpled shirt and suit pants that he knows he doesn’t own because he doesn’t own anything approximating a _suit_ and decides whatever he said in his sleep, he’s completing that ‘stop sleeptalking’ therapy tape _today_ because this is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever done, and once he summoned up a room of lobsters.

He sighs and decides he’s not going to stick around to terrify the maid more, and he wishes himself home. It’s a wish he makes several times a day, so he doesn’t expect for it to go so horribly awry that he finds himself sitting on the floor where his bed is supposed to be because someone re-arranged his room and also put up pink Barbie wallpaper.

Billy yelps in indignation as his backside protests the heavy landing, and he squints at the room around him. It’s pink and bubbly and there’s a bunk bed pushed against the opposite wall, and on closer inspection it’s not Barbie wallpaper but _Dazzler_ wallpaper. Who in their right mind puts up Dazzler wallpaper? How can such a thing even exist? Billy is so baffled by the conundrum that he doesn’t even hear anyone approach until there’s screaming and he’s turning just in time to dodge a bolt of bright toxic green energy leveled directly at his scrotum. 

To be fair the screamer is about four feet tall and she looks about eight. “Who are you?” she demands, and Billy is about to explain when he finds himself dodging another blast. “Why are you in my room?”

“Mary!” comes a scream from the hallway. “What have we told you about using your powers in the house?”

“Mamaaaaa there’s a strange man in my room!” the little girl, presumably Mary, calls back with a high pitched whine. 

Billy flings his hands out. “No no no, I made a mistake, I’m sorry, so sorry, don’t-“

His litany is interrupted with another bolt of toxic green. This time it hits the desk (luckily her aim is terrible) and the desk _melts_. The sudden realization that he is fucked is terrible and surprisingly less piss-inducing than he had expected; all that time with Eli threatening to break bones seems to have actually paid off.

Another second goes by and Mary’s mother is in the doorway, her own hands glowing. It figures that Billy’s first accidental misfire when it comes to teleportation would be into the house of fire-happy mutants. How did this even happen? He’s about to teleport out when the mom screams – not a full blown scream of fear, but a tight squeal of panic. 

_Curiosity killed the Kaplan_ , Billy’s mind provides oh-so-unhelpfully, and as Mary’s hand goes green again her mom grabs it and directs the bolt out the window. “Mary!” she gasps, pulling her close. “That’s _William Lensherr_!”

There’s a still silence in the room and Mary and Billy ask at the same time, “ _Who_?”

It’s like a comedy show, but Billy’s not laughing. Instead he’s holding his hands out, placating. “Okay, I’m sorry, I totally did not mean to land here, I’ll just be going-“

At the exact same time the woman is babbling apologies, but Billy isn’t paying attention to that. All that matters at this exact point in time is that he’s not going to die some kind of horrible death, so he mutters a Teddy-finding spell, but it bounces back against the inside of his head in a way his magic never has. It hurts enough that Billy grips his head and tries not to swear – he’s still in the presence of a little kid, after all – when just a couple of seconds later there’s an explosion in the general direction of the front door, and a moment later a pair of hands join his on his head. “William,” someone above him says, and it takes a minute for Billy to realize that the voice isn’t just familiar, but the entire feeling of the person is familiar in a way that means only one human on the entire planet.

“Tommy?” Billy can’t help but hiss it out, because while the pain is fading from between his eyes he’s still slightly in shock. “What’s going on?”

“The maid told me she offered you breakfast but you didn’t want it,” Tommy says back, his hands pressing away Billy’s hair in a way that feels both comforting and uncomfortably intimate. “Then I felt you in pain and I came.”

The pain, by this point, has faded enough, like Tommy is some kind of balm, and that thought is disturbing enough that Billy pushes away his hands. “I was just trying to go home but I ended up here and did you seriously blow up the door to get in? What happened to _knocking?_ ”

Tommy stands up and turns, and Mary and her mother, who are pressed up against the hallway – Mary rather involuntarily, Billy notes – and looks them over. “It’s nothing,” he decides, “we’ll pay for the damages incurred,” he adds after a second. “His highness got lost.”

“Naturally,” Mary’s mom breathes, and Billy stares up at Tommy, incredulous. Whatever’s going on, this morning’s nuttiness is too much: Tommy acting like a prince takes it over the top. “It’s my pleasure, really, I mean I’ve always wanted to meet you, both of you, I mean.”

Tommy seems to consider it, and then in another moment of what can only be described as _reality-altering insanity_ , offers, “Would you like an autograph?”

Mary’s mother detaches from the wall and nods, going into another room, presumably for a pen, and Tommy’s façade of elegance and breeding falls away, and mostly he just looks bored. “Tommy-“

“Stop calling me that,” Tommy replies, his brow furrowed. 

“ _Thomas_ ,” Billy says, his irritation getting the better of him for a brief second. “What is going on?”

Tommy taps his foot impatiently, and refuses to reply when Mary’s mother comes back with a pen and a photograph of Tommy. Billy stares. Mary stares. 

The universe has clearly ended, rebuilt itself, and in some wacky series of events, given Tommy some measure of celebrity. Either that or Billy is hallucinating, which he wouldn’t put past this morning’s altogether puzzling proceedings. Whatever is going on, Billy can’t ask because Tommy has signed and is pulling Billy along in his wake, apologizing again and assuring that there is a check in the mail.

Billy manages to wait until they get into the elevator and it starts going down before he asks, “Okay, why is there a maid, why is my apartment filled with little girls who want to turn me into a pile of goo, and why do people keep calling me _highness_?”

To Tommy’s credit, he looks concerned. Actually, to be honest, he looks slightly constipated, which for some reason Billy translates as _concerned_ , although in all likelihood it could actually be something more akin to _constipated_. “Did you hit your head?”

“Did you?” Billy snaps back, and his brain snickers and hisses _ice burn_. It’s a bad day when Billy’s own subconscious is making fun of him. 

“No,” Tommy replies, and hits the stop elevator button. “You’re not yourself,” he says, his eyes narrowing a little. “What happened?”

“How should I know! I work up and suddenly I’m a prince? Prince of _where_? Where’s Teddy?”

Tommy looks more and more uncomfortable with this by the second. “We have dinner at the Genoshan embassy tonight,” he says, “and you know how I feel about state dinners.”

Billy flings his hands into the air, as if this will explain everything. “How would I know that? _I have never attended a state dinner in my life_!”

Tommy’s discomfort is clear, and the creepy thing is that Billy can feel it more clearly than he ever has. He feels attached, as though there’s some kind of weird cosmic bond between them, or like someone melted part of his soul and hot-glued it to Tommy’s. It’s not an uncomfortable realization, because it’s just stronger than what he usually feels. After another uncomfortable moment Tommy pulls out a cell phone. “I’m calling Uncle.”

“Who? Uncle? As in _our_ uncle? Like…” Billy whispers it because what. “ _Uncle Pietro?_ ”

“We don’t have another uncle!” Tommy protests. “Who are you? What did you do with my twin?” Suddenly the room is very small, and before Billy can register movement he’s pinned, uncomfortably, against the wall of the elevator. In a true display of how Billy’s brain operates, he takes a moment to realize that the grain of the wood is exactly the same as it is back home and this probably shouldn’t remind him so strongly of a makeout session with Teddy that happened not a week previously. 

But when Billy meets Tommy’s eyes the feelings fade. Instead he stares quietly for an instant, and Tommy pushes him hard again. The elevator nudges slightly. “God I hope that this is like Inception and the elevator falling will only wake me up,” Billy says, unable to stop himself.

“What are you _talking_ about?” Tommy hisses. “What did you do with my brother?”

“I am your brother you speed-addicted weirdo! Why would anyone want to imitate me? I’m pretty sure _pretending_ to have reality bending powers is way less fun than _actually_ having reality bending powers is and I can tell you some days these powers royally blow, and I’m not using the word royally because you seem to be under the impression we are some kind of royalty, dude, so _getoffme_.”

The spell comes out on purpose, even though Billy knows he’ll regret saying it in a minute, when his sense of responsibility overwhelms his annoyance, but blue light flashes and Tommy is flung across the elevator to the other side, where he lands on his backside. He’s up in an instant, and he and Billy stand on opposite ends. “No one else can do that,” Tommy says quietly, and it’s strange because Tommy isn’t quiet, ever, he’s always loud and annoying. “William, what happened?”

“I’m not William,” Billy says. “Well, okay, I am, but everyone calls me _Billy_ and you especially wouldn’t call me _William_.” The feeling in the elevator seems to have calmed, the tension lowering. “Billy Kaplan.”

“Thomas Lensherr,” Tommy replies. “You’re William Lensherr,” he says, his brow furrowing. All in all he seems to be taking this exceptionally well, which is impressive because Billy feels some horrible burrowing feeling doing its best to claw its evil-hearted way up and out of his gut. He never knew that fear was such a painful beast; whenever he’s felt fear it’s never been this deadly, this gutting. “Stop that,” Tomm- _Thomas_ says. “there’s nothing to be afraid of, except possibly Grandfather finding out that you were brainwashed.”

“I’m not brainwashed,” Billy protests, because he would remember something like that. 

Thomas just shakes his head. “Listen,” he says. “we have to figure out whatever’s wrong with you, preferably before we have to meet with the United Nations on Wednesday. I can cancel the meeting with the Genoshan Embassy, I mean it’s just the ambassador kissing up for three hours and _no_ one interesting, and I didn’t want to do anyway, but we can’t miss Wednesday.”

Billy wants to repeat that he doesn’t know what’s going on, but they both know that, so that point’s been covered and is moot. “So what do we do until then?”

“We?” Thomas pushes the elevator button. “You stand up straight and pretend you’re the heir to the Genoshan throne because I don’t want it, and take it a minute at a time. I’m going to try and keep the entire press focused on me and not you, which means I’m probably _not_ going to get laid, which you’ll owe me for, William,” he sniffs, haughty in a way that Billy didn’t know Tommy _could_ be, “which, by the way, means that _you’re_ not allowed to get laid because if I have to suffer through and orgasm-less tour of New York City you absolute-“

“Why are you saying this,” Billy almost wails as the elevator dings their arrival on the first floor. “Why would I _ever_ need to know that you were getting laid?”

“Don’t be a prude, it’s…creepy,” Thomas says, and Billy decides that William Lensherr must either be a huge manslut or whatever kind of incarnation of them belong here are fond trolls of each other.

Thomas strolls through the foyer of the building and opens the door, and when Billy steps out just one second behind, he has to remember to catch his breath, because he’s never seen so many superpowers on the street before in his life.

\-----

“Eli I swear to god if you don’t pick up your phone _right now_ I am going to call your grandmother and tell her you have premarital sex with-Eli?”

William watches as the blonde - _Teddy_ , he said his name was Teddy – paces out of the room and out of earshot, talking on the phone frantically with someone named Eli. Thom- _Tommy_ is sitting on the windowsill, biting his nails anxiously, and William eyes him carefully. He feels anxious, uncomfortable, unhappy, but just knowing that he can feel that, just knowing that Thomas in some incarnation is there makes his better. “Why are you all fascinated with nicknames?”

Tommy seems a little taken by surprise, but he doesn’t question it; instead he just answers, smoothly and quickly, “Because Thomas and William is stuffy and makes us sound old.”

“Isn’t Teddy short for Theodore? And Eli for…Elijah?” 

Tommy snorts at that. “Dude,” he says. “If your name were _Elijah_ , wouldn’t you go by Eli, too?”

William considers it for half a moment and smirks. “I don’t think I would even go by _Eli_ , honestly.”

Tommy laughs and he seems to relax, unwind. “You’re way more easygoing this way,” he says. “So what happened? Spell go way wrong?”

William considers it for a moment. Had anyone else suggested that his magic were going awry, he would have been offended, but with Thomas, any incarnation of his twin, it was just an honest question, one that deserved a moment of thought. “I don’t remember casting any spells,” he admits, finally, “but that doesn’t mean I _didn’t_ ,” he adds. “Uncle fit me with a power suppressor when I was seven because I was casting spells in my sleep, until Grandfather found out and got angry. But I haven’t really done that in a long time.”

“Hold up. Uncle? Like…Uncle Pietro? Quicksilver? And Grandfather _Magneto_?” Tommy perks up like a Jack Russell terrier scenting a squirrel. “Because don’t tell me we live with our dad’s side or something lame like that.”

William laughs because this is _ridiculous_ ; to begin with there is no father’s side, but more importantly, it seems completely outrageous that Tommy wouldn’t know their uncle and grandfather. “That’s what I mean,” he says, still laughing, trying to catch his breath. “How can you have to _guess_ that?”

“Dude,” Tommy replies, and there’s a long moment as he makes a face, “we don’t exactly live with them _here_ , you know. I mean we live with your parents but they’re upstate for the weekend.”

“My parents?” William doesn’t miss that particular turn of phrase, not when Tommy is involved. He can feel a bumping against his chest, the kind of sensation that he’s felt when bodyguards have been too guarded about his mother’s situation at any point. It’s the kind of feeling that leads to palace wings getting demolished, the kind of feeling that leads to people running in terror. “Not yours?”

“You don’t need to be scared, man. Our mom is still the Scarlet Witch I guess. We were kind of separated at birth.” Tommy goes back to biting his nails, and staring at William with his eyebrows raised in the only face of concern that William can recognize on his twin.

William tries to push away the fear, and the questions are enough to make it possible. “The Scarlet Witch,” he repeats dully. “Wanda Lensherr?”

“Maximoff,” Tommy says automatically.

Whatever this place is, whatever this world is, it’s strange and disturbing and different, but the questions keep coming because Tommy is comfortable and familiar and it’s easier than trying to convince Tommy he’s not afraid. There isn’t anyone in any world who he would allow to say that, except his twin. “Have you met her? Is she nearby? Is she safe?”

Tommy’s eyes flick away for a second. “Look, we don’t know, okay? It’s one of the world’s greatest mysteries or something, it ranks up there with where’s Carmen San Diego. She went crazy or something a few years ago and totally disappeared.”

“No,” William says, because in a world where his twin is half his heart, his mother is the other half, laid tenderly side to side. There is no space for anyone else in William’s world, and he guards it selfishly. It’s always been comfortable that way, and this is destroying that comfort. “No, she couldn’t have, why would she, why didn’t Grandfather take care of her?”

Tommy is about to reply, William is about to suggest that they go look for her, together, of course, because he can’t go alone, not to see Mother, that’s _impossible_ , when the blond - _Teddy, his name is Teddy_ \- comes back in the room. “Eli is on his way, he says he’ll pick up Kate while he’s at it. Good thing that the Kaplans are out of town,” he breathes out, looking at William carefully, hesitantly. He is handsome, William decides, and not even in any way that merits qualifiers. He has a beautiful face, a beautiful build, beautiful hair. “I guess we stick around here until then.”

William stands and Teddy seems to move in circuit, like a satellite or a compass. “I’m not staying here,” William announces.

“You can’t go out,” Teddy protests. “Where are you going to go? Everyone you know is in this room, and we need to figure out how to get the _real_ Billy back!”

“I _am_ real,” William snaps back. “Don’t you dare suggest I’m not.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Teddy protests, raising his hands up in a pacifying gesture. “I meant _our_ Billy. William.”

“I want to find my Mother,” William says slowly, annunciating each word carefully. “And I want Tho- _Tommy_ to come with me.”

“Are you sure he isn’t our Billy and he just hit his head? Because that definitely sounded like him for a second there,” Tommy says, and William is thankful for a moment that at least _Billy_ has common sense.

The look on Teddy’s face says, clearly, that he’s not at all interested in what Tommy is saying, but he does look William over in a way that is more intimate than William is actually comfortable with. “No,” Teddy finally says, looking away, either in disgust or disappointment. “That’s definitely not what happened.”

An hour later William is sitting in a room full of more humans than he’s ever been close to in his life, if Tommy has explained them all correctly. Eli looks more angry than concerned, his dark eyes flickering from the team of teenagers ( _team_ that’s what they call themselves) to him where he’s taken up residence in a large armchair and is doing his best to conjure up his grandfather’s calm and arrogance. It’s better than falling into a fit of nerves, the veneer a comfortable mask. It’s the same one he puts on whenever he has to be interviewed.

Cassie is intimidated, and William is pleased with that. It’s illegal in almost every country in the world to alter human DNA to attempt to pass for human, and the idea of someone succeeding and becoming a superhero (like _Peter Parker_ , the phony, the fake) is offensive to William. He can’t help but feel like there’s something deeply wrong with Cassie. 

Jonas doesn’t seem at all bothered by him, but then he doesn’t seem at all bothered by anything. He’s got the pragmatic, expressionless face that William recognizes from his bodyguards, the eternal affected disinterest in the world beyond whoever he’s been charged to protect. 

It’s Kate, though, who seems to be most caught up in William’s expression, who seems to see straight through it. Tommy told him that Kate was rich, that she was the richest of all of them, with a ‘monster apartment’ on the Upper East Side, and so she’s also the one who William is most interested in, because she’s the most human. He doesn’t know any rich humans, except of course his mother, and she doesn’t count. His circle is surprisingly tiny, he realizes, because these are the most teenagers he’s spent time with since the disastrous boarding school experiment ended with Thomas blowing up the school.

Kate stares at him, then, and he stares back. Everyone is silent, and finally she asks, “So where is the real Billy?”

“We _are_ real,” William says, managing to sound bored and unamused and royal even though all he’s really feeling is irritated and possibly a little foolish, because the royal ‘we’ makes him feel ridiculous.

Apparently Kate catches that because she raises both eyebrows. “We? Are we also not amused?”

Tommy sniggers and William would feel betrayed except that Thomas would do the exact same thing, and it’s reassuring in a way that makes him want to slap him on the ear. “Yes, we,” William repeats. 

“Are we _royal_ , now?” Kate doesn’t seem impressed. In fact she seems downright aggressive, as if she’s challenging him. Everyone else in the room is looking from William to Kate like there’s a war about to start, which William feels is ridiculous.

If they were to fight, he would decimate her in an instant.

Instead of fighting, he just replies. “Yes.”

“ _What_?” Tommy says, before the rest of them break out in similar exclamations, including Eli announcing that he’s bullshitting, and Kate snapping that _he has no reason to lie_ , and Cassie making very small squeaking noises.

“Quiet!” Teddy finally yells over the din, and turns to William. “Could you explain, please, because trust me when I say none of us are royal, unless Kate counts as a princess of publishing or something.”

William takes a long-suffering breath. “We are Prince William Erik Lensherr, son of Princess Wanda Lensherr, Grandson of King Erik Magnus Lensherr of the House of M in Genosha. Do you need more titles? Because there are always more titles.”

Instead there’s silence and finally Tommy says, “We’re princes? _Cool._ Do I have a harem? Will I be king one day? Because if it becomes House of T, I’m totally adding an _A_ to the end of it.” 

“This isn’t a joke, is it?” Teddy asks quietly, looking more and more upset. Something in the pit of William’s stomach twists, and that’s unexpected and also uncomfortable. “Billy’s gone.”

“I don’t know if he’s gone or if he’s taken my place in my version of New York City,” William says in a desperate effort to get Teddy to stop making that face; it makes him look like a kicked puppy, only more horrible because William has never in his life cared if men he’s slept with have made sad faces when he fucks them over in the morning, and this time something in him _wants to care_. “If he has, then he’s probably as confused as you are.” It takes him a moment before he turns to Tommy. “Also, you probably won’t be king. You keep telling me you don’t want it and running off to sleep with human girls and get your picture taken by the paparazzi.”

There’s a bark of laughter from Kate, and a look of protest on his twin’s face that slowly degenerates into pleasure. “Dude, I’m like a male Paris Hilton, only less prone to carrying around purse dogs.” He pauses. “I don’t, do I?”

William doesn’t get a chance to reply because Eli clearly cannot stand this banter and he stands up. “Look, I don’t care who you are or why you’re here or if you’re some mystical hallucination or _whatever_ , but you’re in America now, and we don’t have kings.” He pauses. “So you need to bring Billy back.”

“We don’t have _kings_? Seriously, Eli?” Kate says, the tone something like what Aunt Lorna uses when Uncle Pietro says something particularly stupid. “Is that really supposed to be an _argument?_ ”

“Look he just has to fix this, can we agree on that?” Teddy says, his lips screwing together, twisting his mouth around into a scowl. Kate seems to back off.

William raises his eyebrows, both in wonder at the group dynamic and at the demand. “How do you propose I do that?”

“You’re the _reality bender_! This is supposed to be _what you do!_ ” Eli yells, and a fascinating vein throbs its way from his forehead all the way up his scalp and around the top of his bald head. William has never seen anything like that before. His blood pressure must be ridiculously high.

However, William concedes – he has a point. He thinks about it, the kind of spell that it would take to fix it, to send him back to his New York (or maybe just to wake him up from this ridiculous dream) and the spell shines dark blue in the room for a second, and everyone takes a step back.

Which, it turns out, is probably the smartest thing they could have done, because the explosion that follows is blue and loud, snapping William into the air. He sees the floor and the ceiling exchange places more than once, and he lands in an undignified bellyflop on the floor. 

“Holy crap, are you okay?” Tommy huffs.

William doesn’t know because his lungs have decided that they are no longer on speaking terms with oxygen. Treaties are being made, he decides, when in a sudden painful rush air hits his throat, and he croaks, “What.”

He doesn’t even know what’s going on around him, except that a pair of very large hands is holding onto him, helping him up, and someone is at the door assuring, “…no it was just an accident, no one’s hurt, I’m so sorry we woke you up, we’ll keep it down, promise.”

Kate heads back to join the rest of the team after she closes the door and crosses her arms over her chest. “Good job,” she says. “Are you usually so skillful? Even our Billy can manage to not kill himself.”

William manages to flip her the bird before he flops again and right into Teddy’s arms. “That,” he wheezes, “has never happened before. Not in sixteen years of life, have I once had a spell backfire.” The wheezing is pronounced. That air-lung treaty must not be going over as well as hoped, William realizes, and also is abstractedly disappointed with himself for being unable to reign in his slightly neurotic side during a time of magical crisis, even if it’s completely justified, considering he can’t get home.

 _Oh god,_ he thinks in a panic, _I’m going to be stuck here and have to live like a commoner and go by the name **Billy** to fit in and there’s probably some crazy grandmother who will knit me horrible sweaters and Thomas will become king and destroy the world._

“-iam. _William!_ ” Kate’s voice manages to break through the intense panic, and he focuses on her. “I’m guessing that you don’t know how to get back.”

The words don’t help, and William summons every last bit of his princely authority to stand up. “This is none of your concern,” he says, his voice turning into the affected deadpan that his grandfather does so well. 

Kate, however, doesn’t seemed impressed or cowed. Instead she just looks annoyed, as if this is a tremendous inconvenience for _her_. Eli looks uncertain; William recognizes it from his brief stint in boarding school. It’s the look of a man who has never had his authority challenged before by someone with the ability to take it away, and his look isn’t directed at the young woman in a pair of purple pajamas. 

However, it’s Jonas that surprises them. “William’s energy output was much higher than anything Billy ever accomplished. It was much higher even than the output that caused Swarm to disassemble.”

“Who’s Swarm?” William asks Teddy, who is no longer holding on. 

Teddy sighs. “He’s a Nazi made of bees,” he says, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “So you’re saying that William is stronger than Billy but still can’t get through to the other wherever that Billy’s stuck in?” Teddy is starting to look the way that William feels, his face settling into something between fear and irritation. “Can you tell him what spell Billy used?”

Jonas nods. “I can’t explain the magical process that Billy used to get out, so I don’t know if they match. I can only read the energy output. I could probably mimic it on a computer and provide a simulation, but I don’t know if anyone outside of Doctor Strange would be able to interpret the graphics.”

Teddy stands up, then, and walks off – everyone stares for a second and Cassie begins to follow, but he comes out of Billy’s bedroom a minute later holding a cell phone. “-so if he could call me back here or at 555-4234, that would be great. It really is an emergency. Thanks, Maria.” Teddy clicks the phone off and pockets it. “Okay, I called Doctor Strange, and left a message with his secretary.”

“Doctor Strange has a secretary?” Eli asks. “One who answers the phone at three in the morning?”

Teddy shrugs. “He wanted someone to help handle any legal paperwork, apparently. I don’t know the whole deal, Billy talks to him way more than I do, and when I’m around it’s all magical mumbo jumbo. They keep strange hours.” He looks down at William, and William looks up at him, and William resists telling him that he’s not Billy.

He suspects that out of everyone in the room, Teddy is the one that remembers it the most. 

“I guess we just sit tight,” Cassie says, drawing her arms close. Kate shakes her head and starts taking apart the couch. “What are you doing?”

“If we’re staying here, we’re going to need to sleep,” Kate says. “Jonas and Eli can take Henry and James’ room, and you and I can just crash out here.” She’s so businesslike that William finds himself staring. Most humans – the ones he meets – they’re quiet around him, careful, like he might lose his temper at any moment even though that’s in fact quite rare, so Kate is fascinating in how she takes charge.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she snaps after she’s arranged two makeshift beds out of couch cushions, and Cassie looks over, her eyebrows rising ever-so-slightly. 

William, never one to take an order from anyone, let alone a girl with no powers, just keeps watching. “You’re interesting.”

“And you’re not Billy, so stop looking at me and go to bed. You can stare all you want in the morning,” she says, throwing a pillow at him with not only accuracy but enough force that when it bounces off William’s nose it actually kind of hurts a little. He grabs it a moment later, and turns, heading back to the bedroom he woke up in, considering this strange turn of events before he flops on the bed. The backfired spell took more out of him than he had thought, and he lies there quietly, unable to muster the will to move much. 

Everything feels wrong: he’s in a tiny uncomfortable bed when it’s Thomas who should be slumming it, Thomas is technically in the next room over, but he’s not really, there are people here who expect things out of him that he doesn’t understand or even care about. He wishes, and for the first time in his existence, his wishes go unheard.

It’s not a nice feeling. Blue flashes, and stuffed animals in the room explode ( _stuffed animals, really? What is he thinking?_ ). Blue flashes again, and the computer nearby sparks a death-knell. Again: comics burst into a thousand pieces. Again: action figures fly apart. Again, again, again. The wave of destruction continues for another few moments, and finally, _finally_ , William is exhausted enough to sleep, the magic draining any consciousness away from him. The last thought is of Teddy and his kicked puppy face, and how good the handjob was, and how good sex must be with him.

\------

“So you’re telling me that mutants are the majority, humans are the oppressed minority, and our Grandfather rules Genosha.” Billy feels like he’s said these words about four hundred times now, but they still sound like he’s parroting back Hebrew phrases for his Bar Mitzvah. He technically knows what the words mean but the noises just don’t make any sense. 

Thomas takes a sip of something bubbly and fizzy that Billy is pretty sure cost more than what he usually spends on lunch, and nods. “And you’re – well, William – he’s the heir, even though I’m older, because Uncle Pietro doesn’t look like he’ll procreate anytime soon and Grandfather trusts you more. Also you’re in the news a lot less for doing stuff like blowing up your school.”

“Wow,” Billy says. “Some things really don’t change at all.” He looks down at his own drink and is a little too focused on if it’s really Coca-Cola or if the scoff the waiter gave him was because this is actually some much more expensive, high-class coke formula that they laced with gold. He can’t help but think of how many people the cost of this lunch could feed, especially if he hawked the plate and the forks. He considers that this is probably the most expensive restaurant in Manhattan and he could probably order whatever he wanted, including a burger from In-and-Out (because seriously Victor will not _shut up_ about those) and they would probably have a teleporter go and get one to please the Prince. Does he choose something local or does he force someone to expend huge amounts of energy to finally taste the elusive West Coast response to White Castle? Is it worth the energy someone will undoubtedly spend to get there?

He wonders if Kate ever suffers this dilemma.

When he looks up Thomas looks almost amused, which is odd because it’s not a look that really works on their shared face as well as it does on, say, Teddy’s face, which is of course elastic and looks good in any permutation. “They make really good calamari, at least that’s what Julian says. Though how Julian managed to afford a dinner here, I don’t know.”

Squid isn’t exactly kosher, but then that’s never stopped Billy from eating a cheeseburger, so he nods. “Yeah, okay, calamari.” He looks up and the waiter at his elbow (has she been there the _whole time_?) takes the unopened menu and silently glides off (literally, her toes are just skimming the floor in a move that Billy recognizes from using himself when too tired to walk to bed). He takes another sip of his high class Coca-Cola substitute and quirks his mouth from one side to another in a gesture he knows annoys the shit out of Tommy, but Thomas doesn’t seem to mind or notice. “So I – well, William, I guess – is gonna be King. And we have to be at these fancy dinners to prove that the Genoshan royal family – us – are all about peace and goodwill with America. So, uh, why aren’t we in Washington?”

Thomas is watching someone behind Billy, and Billy suspects it is probably female and busty, but he replies anyway. “Uncle Pietro and Aunt Lorna are there. Grandfather thought it would be a nice gesture if we met with some of the high-profile members of the mutant community in New York City, and also the Embassy wanted to throw some huge party.” He grins, then, looking so much like Tommy that Billy isn’t quite sure how to reconcile it. “We kind of convinced him to let us come here. I mean, he’s really protective usually, we’re not allowed out much.”

“You’re alarmingly okay with the fact that I’m not really your twin,” Billy points out. “I don’t think that Magneto would really be okay with this switch, honestly.”

At that point, Thomas looks down, his green eyes flickering away. “It’s not really like you’re not my twin,” he finally says. “I still feel like you’re William. I still feel whole.” Thomas is way more articulate than Tommy, it seems. It makes Billy wonder what Tommy was like before he went into juvie for supers. But Thomas stops that train of thought with a high-eyebrowed, “You’re looking at me like I’m growing a third head.”

Billy can’t help but purse his lips at that. “You’re not really this well-spoken where I’m from.” 

“You’re not really this emotive where I’m from,” Thomas replies sarcastically. “But at least tell me that you’ll manage these dinners. Most of the people don’t know us so you don’t have to worry about fooling them or anything, but I really hate state functions, they’re boring without you – William….whatever.”

“The only thing I know about state dinners is stuff I learned off bad movies from the 80s and what Kate’s told me about fancy donor banquets,” Billy says in a moment of full disclosure. “But I’ll go if you really want me to,” he adds. “I guess I can’t mess it up too bad if no one there is supposed to be foo-“ Suddenly Billy stops talking and leans in. “Wait, who am I supposed to fool?”

Thomas is breaking apart a slice of bread with his fingers and chewing it before he answers in a gesture that is maddeningly slow for someone who is supposed to be a speedster. “Well. Rictor and Julian, they’re our bodyguards – Rictor’s yours, his first name is _Julio_ , but that’s confusing because well, Julian, and Julian’s mine even though he was yours originally, but Ric was Mother’s originally, and you can blame boarding school for that,” Thomas says, going through this as if Billy is supposed to follow that at one point William was a boarding school and also their names, “but they know us pretty well, so they know _you_ pretty well. Rictor sometimes calls you Billy so don’t be surprised by that, but he won’t do it in public because it annoys you – well, it annoys William, anyway – and I think at one point you slept with Julian or something. It’s weird and complicated.” 

Billy wants to hold his head and moan, and also possibly vomit, but he’s committed to at least hearing the rest of this out. 

And because this is Billy’s life, there is of course, more to hear. “There’s Alice, she’s Uncle Pietro’s second assistant and I’m pretty sure they’re boning because there is just no way two people stare at each other that often and _don’t_ , but her power is something pathetic like she can find the missing sock or something, so Grandfather doesn’t approve. She’s acting secretary on this trip. And of course, Mother.”

At that word Billy decides that vomiting is probably going to happen in the next five seconds, because the nerves in his stomach check out, letting his stomach twist in a knot previously only achieved by his headphone cords. “Mother?”

“We talk to her every night, otherwise she worries.” Thomas looks cool as a cucumber. “Sometimes twice a day, if Grandfather doesn’t have a lot of time to visit her.”

“Mother?” Billy squeaks again. “I have – get to talk to her?”

“Don’t you get to talk to her where you are?” Thomas says, slightly unimpressed by the slightly superior soprano tones his now-twin has taken on.

But how does Billy explain it? How the Scarlet Witch disappeared for _years_ , how they went looking for her, how Tommy went into hell and how Billy can’t stop himself from wondering even though he has a perfectly serviceable pair of parents (more than that, he knows, _way_ more than that, his parents are wonderful, amazing, but he can’t help but wonder, he has to _know_ ) waiting for him who love him and feed him and make sure he doesn’t have a spontaneous nervous breakdown? How does Billy explain that all he wants is to know where his magic comes from and to have a whole family that makes him feel whole, instead of half a family? How he’s practically idolized the Scarlet Witch his whole life long and never had the chance to tell her anything meaningful except how he got beat up that one time?

“No,” is all he finally manages, his mouth betraying him by refusing to open up and reveal any more than that.

But apparently Thomas isn’t buying the calm exterior because he just looks sharply at Billy then. “Whoa. You seriously don’t,” he says, and is about to say something else but they’re interrupted by food being slipped under their noses. Billy is distracted because _how the hell_ , but Thomas just opens his mouth and inserts a piece of calamari. 

Billy huffs and tries not to be too obvious and eats a piece of his own, and melts. Julian was right; the calamari is amazing. It tastes like perfect and sea and amazing, and also fat, and Billy just sits there hoping his face isn’t glazed over in some expression of intense pleasure that usually only Teddy is privy to. Apparently, though, this is enough for Thomas, who is smirking. “So tonight we’ll go to this function and if you mess up too bad I’ll say you got sick from the calamari here and you just don’t feel up to it.”

“No one will get fired for that, right?” Billy asks, his eyes wide, because that seems like just the thing the dictatorial hereditary monarchy might do. Son of Stalin gets food poisoning, kill the cook.

Thomas shrugs. “How should I know? Probably not, Uncle Pietro hates that kind of press.” He eats another piece. “Don’t worry, bro. I’ve got this.”

For a second, Billy hears Thomas, and he isn’t sure if he’s assuaged or just more concerned.

\------

William woke up to the sound of hell - which is to say _not_ silence, and Teddy - his name is _Teddy_ , he forces himself to remember - making an omelette in the tiny kitchen. It was all so disturbingly domestic, horrifying on a level that William was previously unfamiliar with. 

But the omelette had been edible, and Kate and Eli wake up to the smell of food around the same time that Thoma- _Tommy_ does. Everyone eats silently, no longer staring at him, and Vision and Cassie are the last ones in the room. "So," Cassie asks quietly, intensely. "What do we do? Do we tell Tony Stark about this?"

Before anyone can reply, William perks up. "Tony Stark? The athlete?"

There's silence and Cassie drops her fork at the same time her jaw does. After the click and pause, Kate clears her throat. "Excuse me, the what?"

"Tony Stark, you know," William says excitedly for the first time since he's arrived in this terrible place, explaining Tony's record in the ring against Sentinels, and the epic battle between him and his father for who is better at the job. He's halfway into describing the last match and how he had wanted to go when Eli can't hold it in anymore - he just starts laughing.

And then they're all laughing, all six of them, even Jonas. William doesn't know why, it's not funny, and he gets the distinct impression they're laughing at him. "What's so _funny_ ," he says, knowing it sounds petulant, but his tone is dropping and so is his temper. 

Then Kate doubles over and _howls,_ and her hand goes to Tommy's shoulder, and it's as though all the indiginities of being laughed at weren't enough, there's a bubble of happiness, a moment of true _joy_ in Tommy when that happens, something that's supposed to be reserved for him and Mother, something _private_ , something that is like proof that they are made for each other, that they are one person in two bodies.  
Just like that the couch explodes, this time silently, and Eli and Jonas thump heavily to the ground, landing on their backsides; shards of couch end up in the wall and ceiling. "Don't touch him," William says, making the blue of his eyes more intense on purpose. He knows people respond to displays of powers, that's what Grandfather always said, but the deep royal blue that William created was always more terrible, scarier than Grandfather's deep magenta (pink, Thomas called it when he felt particularly difficult). 

Teddy steps in fast to diffuse the situation, but it's Tommy who manages, Tommy who speeds to William's side and presses his hands on William's shoulder, who presses their foreheads together, who makes William forget for an instant that this isn't Thomas, that this is _Tommy_ , but it doesn't matter because whatever this is happens to suffice for now. "Hey, chill," Tommy says, his hands steady, reassuring. "Don't worry about it. It's chill."

William nods slowly, and looks up, but where he expects to see fear on Kate's face he only sees annoyance, irritation, anger. She isn't afraid of him. 

William has never encountered that before. "Hey, can you put the couch back together? I mean, it's the least you could d-"

Before Tommy finishes the request, the couch flies back together. "There," he says, impassively. 

"This didn't solve anything," Teddy protests, his lips pressing together. "I don't think we should tell T- _Iron Man_ , Cass," he adds, and Cassie doesn't look impressed. "I don't think we should tell anyone until we talk to Doctor Strange. Eventually he's bound to call back and maybe he can shed light on this spell and how to fix it?"

"Yeah, but what do we do until then?" Kate asks. "It's not like we can just put on _The Sound of Music_ and hope for the best, Teddy."

\-------

"I don't understand the yodeling."

William has sat for the past hour and a half watching raptly, and this is the first time he's spoken. Everyone else is sitting around the living room - Teddy has his head draped against the arm of the couch like he's seen this a hundred times before, Eli is half asleep in the chair, Kate is sitting primly on another chair, and Cassie and Jonas keep texting each other - at least, Cassie texting and giggling, while Jonas looks like he is genuinely answering her with his brain.

Tommy is splayed out on his back on the floor. "There is no understanding yodeling. It's some kind of horrible torture invented by Austrians because those stupid alpine horn things didn't annoy enough people. Why are we watching this movie?"

Teddy mutters something that sounds something like _Billy's favorite_ from the couch, and Eli lets out a snore. William shushes them as the puppet show ends. "This movie is amazing," he declares.

"Oh my god they're exactly the _same_ ," Tommy whines from the floor. "How is this happening? You were supposed to be the _cool_ Billy. This movie is so lameeeee."

William doesn't respond to that; he just keeps watching. It's Teddy who finally sits up. "You seriously never saw this before? It's a classic!"

"Grandfather doesn't like the subject material." 

"He doesn't like singing nuns?" Tommy lifts his head up. William realizes that Tommy is fascinated by the idea of their grandfather, and it warms him a little to think that at the same time that the frustration of his counterpart not knowing his family strikes him in the chest. 

William looks down. "No, Nazis," he says.

William almost doesn't notice the sudden hush in the room as everyone looks at him, but he catches Eli waking up at the mention of that. "What?" he asks. "Everyone knows that my grandfather was in the Auschwitz."

"Yeah but no one says it," Tommy replies. "It's kind of a no-go. Is Germany still on the map where you're from?"

William bristles. "Of course it is, but it's not a Nazi country anymore. The war ended in 1945. That's why Grandfather decided to fight. It's why Genosha _exists_." The teenagers are looking at each other, exchanging glances that mean something. "What?"

"I guess...it makes sense, then, why Magneto just took over." Eli's voice is kind of confused, a little hesitant. 

William looks them over. "Did you think he was just _born_ King?"

"That's what a monarchy is, isn't it?" Kate raises her eyebrows, and William suddenly sees something behind her eyes, something that isn't irritation or anger, something that's more akin to _understanding_. William had never imagined that he would want to be understood by a human, especially considering his contact with humans had usually involved sex, and he didn't want to have sex with Kate. 

William draws up his coldest glare, then, like armor. "But all monarchies must begin somehow."

Kate shrugs. "Seems sad," she says, "to live in a place where power is the only thing that matters."

"In any world," William snaps back, "power is the only thing that matters."

"People matter," Kate argues.

William snorts through his nose. "Humans must be kept in line."

" _Whoaaaaa_ ," Teddy interrupts, "Oh look the party's starting! So Long, Farewell is about to start!"

But it's too late. "Monarchies are flawed, and the Nazis that your Grandfather hates said the exact same thing about the _Jews_ before they killed them!" Kate is yelling now, and the words that come out of her mouth echo in the apartment, but William isn't listening. Tommy is flinging himself between them, and so is Teddy, at the same time that Eli pulls a ridiculous shield from behind the chair.

Electricity crackles, the smell of ozone snapping in the air, and at the moment it's going to strike, Teddy's pocket starts singing, " _My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard and they're like, it's better than-_ "

Teddy answers it before anyone can say a word, muttering into it. William is so inherently puzzled by the music - first off, it was terrible, and second off, _why is Teddy listening to a song about milkshakes_? that the lightning fizzles out into nothing.

"That's Doctor Strange," Teddy says when he hangs up, and the team stays poised in the same rigid, upset position. "He says he can meet us tonight, but not sooner, something about a hell dimension - there was a lot of breakup - and we should meet him in Central Park. Also, something about bringing sponges."

Kate fumes but nods eventually, clearly deciding that it isn't worth it. William looks at the movie, which had been so entertaining. He doesn't want to watch anymore. Cold settles into his chest like some kind of horrible balm; dignity beyond measure, although the panic is there too. Go home, the inside of his head tells him, you don't belong here. Certainly no one would ever speak to him that way at home, no one would ever say such things.

 _Go home_ , he thinks, waiting for the blue flash, the spell to click, to be in his mother's room, surrounded by her things, surrounded by the safety of _her_. Tommy looks at him, his head half-cocked. "This movie is no longer entertaining," he says, and Tommy twists his lips.

"Yeah, finally you figure it out," he agrees, and takes William's hand. "Come on, let's go for a walk or something."

Eli is about to say something, but one look from Tommy silences it, and William finally feels like his twin is there, taking him by the hand, leading him away.

\-------

"You owe me for this."

"Put it on my tab."

Billy tugs at the collar of his shirt. This is way worse than a suit and tie, he thinks. With a suit and tie, things might be a little tight, but it doesn't _itch_ like a sonofabitch. It's not really all that heavy. There are no medals clinking and threatening to turn a sash around.

The sash, he decides, is the worst part. "I look like a Boy Scout," he laments, tugging at his collar again. "I wasn't good at being a Boy Scout, Thomas," he says with a whine which comes out more distressingly high-pitched than he had initially expected it to be. 

Thomas laughs and reaches over, tugging thing, adjusting them. There's no regard for his personal space, something that Billy's gotten disturbingly accustomed to in the past day. "You look like a prince of Genosha, except a little dopier than usual. Look bored." Billy tries to school his features into the very image of ennui, but he feels like all that he manages is constipated.

"You look constipated," Thomas confirms. “It’s not like… _I don’t like being here you god this is so hard_ ,” he continues, “it’s more like, _I really don’t care about you_. Here, like this.” He schools his features into an expression that Billy has never seen on Tommy’s face – haughty and uninterested, but not at all irritated. “Okay, you try.”

Billy thinks about how he feels when his mom talks about the latest studies done on chimpanzee brains. About his father’s case files when they need numbering and Billy’s grounded so he has to do it. About sixth period Econ.  
“….close enough,” Thomas decides. “It’ll fool people who don’t know you, anyway. Stop picking at your collar, just, I don’t know, line it with silk or something.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m lacking in an abundance of silk here,” Billy points out, practicing his bored face.

Thomas shakes his head. “Are you kidding me? _Magic_.” Thomas keeps shaking his head and mutters something about amateur, and Billy is about to snap something back – something witty and nasty and no doubt scathing, he’s sure, but he’s interrupted by Rictor opening the door. 

“Highnesses? Are you ready?”

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Thomas says, rolling his eyes. “Is Julian out there?”

“He is,” Rictor replies, bowing his head, and Thomas strides out without a backward glance. Suddenly Billy feels very alone.

Also very itchy.

“Your highness?” Rictor asks, his very slight Mexican accent coloring his words in a way that Billy assumes is normally delightful but right now only makes him think of the extended Mexican family that lives down the street from Eli’s house – the grandmother loves Tommy and gives him tamales every time she makes them, which drives Eli crazy, and the grandfather yells at Billy to stop making his granddaughter miserable. Billy wonders if they exist here.

Or if he’ll see them again. All his attempts at getting back, thus far, have culminated in tremendous headaches and Thomas telling him to quit it, that Grandfather will solve it once they’re back in Genosha. Billy figures if he looks pathetic enough Magneto won’t kill him for _Prince and the Paupering_ his grandson. He imagines it: _but really, we’re the same person, except I come from a world where you’re a supervillain, I’m an Avenger, and my mom is a crazed hermit recluse. Also, Thomas still blew up his school._

There isn’t a lot of smiling in the scenario in his head.

Rictor is looking at him, Billy realizes, and he puts a hand on the back of his head, and twists his shoulders, trying to find a way to get comfortable, but desists when Rictor’s stare gets even more intense. Rictor shakes his head. “Get out there, kid. You’ll wow ‘em.”

“Do you think so?” Billy asks before he can stop himself, and he knows it sounds sad and pathetic. Normally, he wouldn’t care: he makes a habit of sounding sad and pathetic, it happens at least once a week at family dinners with his bubbe, but this time he feels slightly more self-conscious about it. It doesn’t help that his collar is still itching.

Rictor just raises his eyebrows slightly, a smile quirking up the edges of his lips even as his eyes follow Billy out of the room.

 _’Em_ seems to be mostly made up of Manhattan’s elite – Billy feels like he’s on an episode of Gossip Girl, only with more people on their phones, if that’s even possible, or maybe like he tripped into Kate’s life on accident – and they all are very polite. He can feel that old social anxiety rise, the one that his mom made him learn how to quell with breathing and reminders that they weren’t looking at him, except it’s kind of hard in this case because _that’s exactly what they’re doing_. He wants to hide in a corner; luckily Rictor, standing on his left hand side, is excellent at providing a three foot bubble.

He accepts all the acknowledgements, trying to remember Thomas’ face - _I don’t care, I don’t care_ \- and it works pretty well for the first hour, even as Billy’s anxiety ratchets up to unknown levels. He decides he hates the upper-crust, he hates wool suiting, and he hates being followed around by a stern silent Mexican. He’s about to decide that he hates not having Tony Stark to make a spectacle when it would be really convenient when he hears someone say softly, worriedly, in a tone that he recognizes from school as _please god don’t let him hurt me, take my lunch money also my pants I don’t need them_ , “Prince William?”

Rictor turns half a second before Billy does, and when Billy turns he sees a young man – okay, a kid his age, only wearing the clothes way more stylishly, like he was born in them – who is taller, slightly bulkier in build. His blonde hair falls over his forehead in a way that reminds him of Teddy, but he isn’t as good-looking (maybe that’s bias) and he’s definitely not as confident looking. Even though he’s taller and bigger, Billy feels like the boy is smaller than he is. Maybe it’s the way he’s holding himself, like he’s afraid of Billy, or the way his eyes keep darting away.

It’s fear, and Billy recognizes it. “Yes?” He wonders if he’s supposed to keep his ‘full of ennui’ face here, because he’s not, not at all, not even a little bit.

“Don’t you remember me?”

Billy looks over at Rictor, who blinks down at him, and realizes he needs to rescue him because the bodyguard actually provides a name. “Vincent Smythe. From Saint Clair’s.” 

Saint Clair’s, Billy knows, was the name of the ridiculously elite _Dead Poet’s Society_ style boarding school that William was sent to – he only knows this because Thomas kept talking about it, apparently he wasn’t over the traumatic separation, and actually, thinking about it the codependency is kind of _creepy_ \- so this guy must have been a schoolmate or something. “Right,” Billy says, startled. “Um, yeah?”

“I thought – I don’t know, maybe, do you want, to get a drink?”

Billy looks up at Rictor, who looks impassive. He wonders if there’s training to look like you don’t have an opinion about your royal charge’s school life when he’s about twenty years younger than you, and decides that he really doesn’t care (except he really wants to know how to do that, it’s really impressive, actually). “All right,” Billy decides.

They go to the bar nearby and sit there, quietly, and for a few minutes it’s silence as Vincent drinks something with liquor and Billy drinks the heavenly $99 a can brand of Coke. He’s still trying to decide how to ask the bartender what the heroin-to-Coke ratio is, because nothing else can explain how absolutely delicious it tastes, when Vincent asks, “Do you want me to suck your cock here?”

It is a transcendent kind of pain, the pain of having carbonation enter both the sinuses and the lungs at once. Billy wonders if this is what the Avengers should really use when they need information, because it probably didn’t do any actual damage to his body but he would tell someone absolutely any information they wanted to avoid having it happen again. The hacking is alarming the bartender, and also Rictor, which Billy realizes is a horrible horrible thing because having an alarmed, annoyed bodyguard while talking to someone who he clearly didn’t remember might actually result in someone _dying_ , so he raises his hand quickly to ward off Rictor’s worry and grabs a tissue from the bartender.

He figures his snot will be black for about a month.

“Excuse me?” Billy whispers back, thankful for at least the guy’s discretion. Considering the only person who has ever asked him that question is also his boyfriend, Billy is surprised he’s not blushing furiously, but then it might not be possible when blood is rushing to your lungs in the body’s way of defending itself from soda-induced drowning.

Vincent pales, like he’s terrified, which Billy wonders about, because he’s hardly scary. “I’m sorry, I know you – I mean, you and I – I shouldn’t have assumed, please, please don’t be mad.”

Billy shakes his head. “I’m not mad but can you expand on the uh…” Billy moves his hands around in the air, as if that explains everything.

Vincent colors up again, and he leans over, to whisper in Billy’s ear. It’s terrifyingly intimate, something Teddy’s done but then Billy occasionally wears Teddy’s underwear so it’s different. “I would get under the bar, and unzip your pants. You’re amazing when you’re hard, you know…I want to worship your cock, please, please let me.”

Billy’s not made of stone, so he feels that familiar stirring, and takes a breath. “What makes you think I would want this?”

Vincent is shaking; and it’s not the good kind of shivering. Something here is really, really wrong. “You always wanted it before. You were good to me, you let me touch you, I was always good, wasn’t I? I had a talented mouth, you said. You told me that you wouldn’t replace me right away. That I was _good_. You told me that you would let me come by your hand one day.”

Billy’s getting more and more creeped out, and at the point where it’s almost too much, Thomas arrives. He looks alarmed, like he’s been the one listening to this instead of Billy, like Tommy looks whenever he and Teddy are cuddling on the couch. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Vincent almost falls off the bar stool from the movement of Thomas between them, and Billy wants to protest but Thomas is already in full battle mode, it seems, because suddenly it looks like he’s no longer a five-seven teenage boy but an impossibly tall monolith of ego and superiority. “Leave at once. Don’t look back.” The words _I’ll kill you if you do_ aren’t spoken out loud, but there’s a slight vibration to the barstool that Vincent’s next to that speaks louder than words. Vincent stumbles away and Julian moves between where Vincent was and the twins are, and Thomas is suddenly touching his face and pressing their foreheads together and they’re _in public_ and _oh god what is going on-_

Except that it’s actually a comforting feeling. Billy’s soothed by the touch, the quiet, as if they’re encased in a bubble, even though he can still hear the rumblings of the world around them. This, he decides with a horrible snapping realization in his skull, must be what William feels _all the time_. Billy had Teddy first, but even with Teddy he doesn’t have this level of synchronicity, like the universe is centered and whole right here.

Actually it’s kind of creepy. Does Thomas also have Tommy’s soul? Is that what’s going on here?

He doesn’t know how long they stand like that, foreheads pressed together, before Rictor clears his throat. “Tell them William’s taken ill,” Thomas says, taking Billy’s hand. “Tell them I threw a tantrum. Tell them we went out and got whores. Just make sure they don’t care we’re gone.”

“So, sick, tantrum, or whores?” Julian drawls. “Because I’m going with _whores_ , but then-“

“I don’t care,” Thomas says, and tugs Billy along. “Rictor, you come with us, back to the hotel!”

The limo ride is quiet – Rictor looks mostly bored, and Thomas is staring at New York go buy outside the window. Billy is flopped against the seat of the limo; the last time he rode in one was for his Bar Mitzvah, which is mirroring this night in disturbing ways, but the novelty wore off about three seconds after he learned that there was no booze on board.

Not that he was thinking of getting drunk in order to focus on something other than this horrible night, because that would be irresponsible.

They get back up to the room of the hotel and it’s quiet even as the security team (which is, Billy finds out, an actual _team_ , one Rictor is in charge of, which considering what he’s heard about Julio Rictor back home just seems _irresponsible_ ) gives them the all clear and Billy flops on the bed. Thomas doesn’t do anything so undignified – he just sits next to him. “What happened?”

“He started telling me about boarding school. About what William…” There’s a pause, because there are lines, and telling your not-quite-soul-twin about how his _real_ twin probably molested fellow students probably falls on the hardcore side of one of them.

Thomas scowls. “Did he seduce that guy?”

“Seduce is kind of a nice word,” Billy says, teetering on the edge of the line.

Thomas pulls his legs up to his chest. “He told me, you know,” he says. “He told me all about what he did in school.” There isn’t an ounce of disgust, or discomfort. 

“How he…he did?” Billy looks up from where he’s facedown in a pillow. 

“We don’t hide anything from each other,” Thomas informs him as if this should be obvious. “Don’t you and your Thomas tell each other everything?”

Billy looks away, then. No, they don’t, he realizes. Before it wasn’t a problem, before it wasn’t anything strange. They were strangers for the first sixteen years of their life. Before Billy met Tommy he had Teddy, Teddy was the anchor, and Tommy was a stranger. Sure, a stranger that he’s gotten to know, who he’s kind of grown attached to, but they don’t talk about the deep secrets of their souls. He doesn’t think Tommy wants it, but how does he know? How can he know?

“You don’t ever remember a time without him, do you?” Billy asks, finally. 

Thomas shrugs. “No,” he replies. “We were always like one person.” Now the white-haired prince seems uncomfortable. 

“Tommy…he and I aren’t like you and William, I guess,” Billy says. There’s a darkness there, something that Billy recognizes as the darker part of his personality. _Prone to depression_ , is what his mom calls it. “We’re not the same person.”

“We’re not the same,” Thomas protests. “But if your twin isn’t the most important person in your world, how can you say that you’re really twins? Might as well be strangers.” Thomas stands, rolling his shoulders. 

“Then you tell me, tell me what he did.”

Thomas balks for a second, and then shakes his head. “He would seduce one guy. Make the guy give him a blowjob, and then tell him to go away, that he didn’t deserve him. He would get them involved in him so they couldn’t see straight. Pit them against each other for his attention or get them horny and leave them.”

“But why?” Billy doesn’t know why he even cares. This isn’t him, this isn’t anyone he knows. But suddenly it’s desperately important. There is a terrible suspicion in Billy, there, but he can’t bring himself to ask it, not when he already feels sick and terrified and Thomas is the only point of reference he has here.

 _Was it magic_ is the question he wants to ask, did William take that extra breach in power, did he overstep that boundary?

But he doesn’t ask. He just looks up and waits.

Thomas looks confused for a second. “Because he could.”

\-----

They end up on a park bench somewhere north of Strawberry Fields, watching kids running after a ball. Tommy is leaning back against the bench, and William is sitting, his posture ramrod straight; it's something he only does when he's anxious or nervous, he can tell that he's having a bad day when suddenly he sits like someone's strapped a metal board to his spine.

This is the textbook definition of a bad day.

"So explain it to me again," Tommy demands, and the repitition doesn't bother William.

If anything, it's soothing, that there are pieces of his twin that are identical here. "Grandfather doesn't see us that often; me, more than you, because you gave up the throne. Uncle Pietro does a lot of business so he tries to mostly ignore us, although he favors you - so does Grandfather, because you all look alike. Mother, though," he pauses, thinking of his mother, dark haired and green-eyed, soft spoken, always wrapped in swaths and layers of scarlet, billowing cloth. How she smooths down their hair and calls them _her_ boys. "Mother doesn't favor either of us," he manages, finally.

"She really loves us, right?" Tommy's voice is impassive, like he doesn't care, but William knows his secret; the rippling, tearing undercurrent of _want_ , like blue ribbons of magic just under the skin. William feels it brush against his own, as if Tommy could enhance his magic. 

It makes William smile, an honest smile, the kind of smile only his twin sees. "Yes," he answers. "She truly does. She can't leave Genosha - well, she can, she has palaces in many places - but she _doesn't_. She barely leaves her apartment in the palace. Instead we go to her. Grandfather the most, because he loves her, but we eat most of our meals with her if we're in Genosha. We weren't, you know." He thinks about it. "We had come to New York City for a royal tour. We left her with Grandfather - even Uncle Pietro and Aunt Lorna weren't in the Palace. It was only supposed to be for a little while, not long at all." His voice drifts a little, he can hear his tightly restrained hold on it loosen. "She hears from us every day."

"Better than here, where I don't think she knows we exist." Tommy leans back until his back is against William's shoulder, and William finally manages to relax. It's the kind of intimacy he's used to, the twin he has, not the twin who just happens to exist. "Guess the only family I have here is you." There's a slight tug of possessiveness, one that William revels in. 

"Doesn't Billy," Williams says the name like it tastes bad, "fill in?"

"Billy's....Billy's lucky, and he doesn't get it," Tommy says. "He has a family that puts up with him and a boyfriend and a best friend and _Kate_ , I mean, I don't compare. And that's cool," Tommy adds, "like, I don't _need_ him to like me or anything, or be creepily co-depedent on me or something."

William feels the tugging, then, the want for love that only he can identify, the kind of thing that makes them one soul, the overlap of a person, like plans for two buildings laid atop each other and held up to the light until they meld. "Then he doesn't deserve you," he decides.

"Nah," Tommy says. "It would probably drive me crazy, anyway." 

William looks over - he wants to know why Tommy keeps doing that, keeps denying it, but he doesn't ask. Some things are private, even to twins.

They head back to the apartment in the afternoon, after Tommy gets them lunch ("I figure I owe you food, you probably don't have any cash, Billy'll pay me back"), and William discovers it's turned into the kind of day that once-upon-a-time he had wished he could have. Quiet, private, peaceful. The kind of day that is impossible with an entourage of bodyguards and press secretaries hounding you steps, that's impossible even at school when things are supposed to be private. There is no privacy when mutant paparazzi dog your steps. There’s no privacy when you can’t even enjoy a night with a man without knowing that the next day, he’ll be torn between bragging about it and groveling for mercy.

Kate is waiting at the door of the building. Her arms are crossed, and she looks pretty polished for someone who is dealing with only a few hours of sleep and a missing teammate (William still doesn't understand this _team_ thing. Tommy's explained it over and over but it still doesn't make _any_ sense at all). Tommy stares at her, and William bristles at the sudden burst of affection his twin is feeling.

"Cassie and Jonas went ahead to scout it, Eli's at the library, and Teddy's upstairs still. I thought I would wait down here," she says, and she seems softer than before. Maybe she got a nap, or a personality transplant. "Any luck?"  
"He didn't do magic, if that's what you mean," Tommy replies. "I mean, seriously, Kate, what do you think we did, go to Central Park to commune with the hippies?" He goes to sit next to her, and they bend their heads together in a familiar motion. “He’s not so bad.”

“I’m right here,” William says, moving closer. 

Kate nods, “Welcome to the club,” she says, rolling her eyes. “That’s just how Tommy talks.” She looks up at him for a minute, squinting against the light. “Guess Thomas doesn’t talk like that.”

William is feeling ridiculously possessive of that information, and he just shrugs. He knows that if were just to say so, it wouldn’t change anything. Thomas would still be his, not hers, but he feels like Thomas would like Kate.

“Yo, William,” Tommy says, waving his hand in front of his face suddenly. “Did you hear me?”

“Obviously not,” William says, grabbing his twin’s hand in a gesture he does at least forty times a day back in his…world? Dimension? “Don’t do that.”

Tommy stares for a second. “Whoa,” he says, his eyes widening a little. “You can’t do that when you’re Billy.” He tugs his wrist out of William’s grasp. 

“I’m always William,” he sighs, feeling a pulse of blood behind his eyes. This world is exhausting like nothing he’s ever encountered before, including clothes shopping with Aunt Lorna. He slept most of the night in that horrible uncomfortable bed, too tired to even change it into something more to his taste, and he hadn’t cast any spells after his disastrous attempt to go home, but he felt like he hadn’t slept after a massive session of casting spell after spell.

“Hey, Tommy,” Kate says, “Go take your shower, I’ll watch him.”

Tommy looks doubtful, and William doesn’t want him to go, but he doesn’t want to seem like he’s afraid when he’s not. He’s just tired and Kate makes him _more_ tired. Tireder? Tiredest. The words are in William’s head, an old exercise that a teacher used to make him do, a way to reword spells. A useless exercise to reword spells, because his magic didn’t work that way. He knew some people did – one spell one word, forever, but no, not William Lensherr.

He refuses to sit on the stoop. He’s wearing a shirt that he hates because it’s what was in _Billy’s_ closet and a pair of jeans that are too big and a _hoodie_ (to be fair, his brain supplies, even though he doesn’t want to be fair, fairness is the last thing he feels like being, Teddy did apologize for Billy’s terrible taste in clothing, claiming that, quote, _We’re trying to train him to actually buy things that fit just him and not the both of us_ ) and he’s not going to sit on a stoop with a human who looks at him like he’s an insect.

But then, as if she can tell what he’s thinking (William notes that he hates mind-readers, they are all smug assholes) she says, “You know I don’t actually hate you.”

“I don’t really care,” William responds, his defenses rising like a tsunami. 

“Okay, well, I don’t,” she insists. “But Billy is one of my best friends, and if you’re here then he’s there, and I’m not really interested in what your _Grandfather_ might do to him.”

William is unsettled by the idea, but he doesn’t shift. She has a point and it’s less that his counterpart could get hurt, but the image of his Grandfather hurting someone who looked like him plays to his vanity. He and Thomas were one, and Grandfather would never hurt either of them – at the very least because it would distress their mother, but what if there was someone who wasn’t him? What would Grandfather do? Could he hurt someone who was the same genetic makeup, but not the same personality?

The answer is always yes. 

“Thomas wouldn’t let him,” William says. “Like I would never let anyone hurt Tommy.”

“You’re eerily codependent, you know that?” Kate points out like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Her earrings swing in an arc as she shakes her head. 

William sighs. He’s heard it before – the creepy twins, the strange oddities they have, how they move in unison sometimes, but not slight unison, perfect odd unison, even twitches the same. It’s what lead Grandfather to make his decision to send them to opposite ends of the world for schooling: William to America and Thomas to Switzerland. It’s not all talk, though. There is something in William that makes him feel like Thomas is holding a slice of his soul, like they were born in a strange conjoined fashion, impossible to take apart.

But that doesn’t mean he’ll admit it. “We’re not.”

“You are,” Kate says. “You move like you’re in orbit and I can tell that Tommy doesn’t realize it, but the more I see you together the more you do it. It’s something Billy does with Teddy, like polar north is the other person. You look at him whenever you want to make a decision or say something you think might be important.” Kate shrugs. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

It’s the first time that William has heard the words _there’s nothing wrong with it_ used to describe his relationship with his twin and it makes him feel a rush of affection towards Kate that he’s not sure he’s altogether comfortable with. He shouldn’t like her, he knows, but she doesn’t care and even their family was bothered by it.

He is about to reply when Teddy and Tommy both trudge out of the building. “That was a fast shower,” William mutters, even though he’s secretly pleased by the speed of it.

“There’s a reason my codename is _Speed_ , little brother, and it has nothing to do with the drug. Are we doing this or not?” Tommy looks up to Teddy, who nods grimly, and Kate leads the way.

The first thing that William notices about Doctor Strange is that he looks like he should be a therapist. He doesn’t seem at all surprised by the story, but then considering that Cassie and Jonas are sitting with him on a bench and eating a hot dog, William assumes they filled him in. He stands up and looks William over for a moment, and nods his head.

“This may take a while.”

They wait around for Eli who comes back from the library looking harried. “I spent all day chasing after some kids from uptown who kept messing up the shelves.”

“God forbid someone mess with the Dewey Decimal System,” Tommy replies, rolling his eyes, but Eli doesn’t look very happy about it, but he doesn’t reply, either. William feels his lips pull in a smirk, and Doctor Strange finishes his hot dog around that time. 

That’s when things get strange. William isn’t paying much attention to Doctor Strange’s babbling with the other teens, because he keeps getting distracted by things like the fact that his sense of his own magic was starting to diminish and also that the squirrels seem utterly unafraid of him, but suddenly the piercing right into his magic makes him lash back instinctively, blue lightning scattering toward the place the pain was coming from. There’s a flush of anger, then: William knows, instinctively, what just happened. Whoever this man who looks like a therapist is, he just poked into his head, into his _magic_ , into that part of him that makes him different and strange and _powerful_ , and no one does that, not to a Prince of Genosha. He wants to say something, but the scan, combined with the lash of lightning, makes William’s head ache and his tongue thick in his mouth for a moment.

Tommy is the one who saves Doctor Strange from getting zapped – he had probably sensed it coming – and Doctor Strange only looks mildly perplexed, as if getting zapped by teenaged realitybenders happens on a semi-regular basis. “Well,” he explains, brushing off his sleeves, “I can tell you one thing for certain: it feels like Billy. Have you considered that he might be brainwashed?”

“I didn’t think Swarm could brainwash people,” Teddy replies, sounding concerned. 

Doctor Strange pauses to consider this and William starts wondering where this man got his medical degree. “Bees do have a certain level of mind control, considering they are individual units of a hive mind, so we shouldn’t discount the possibility. Have you considered contacting Emma Frost?”

Tommy perks up but Teddy just stares blankly, and Eli interrupts, “No, no, we’re not calling the X-men to solve this. I’m pretty sure the only thing they would do is insist that we send Billy and Tommy upstate and-“

“-but Eli she’s _hot_ -“

“We’re not contacting Emma Frost!” Kate snaps. Everyone looks to stare at her. “If he’s brainwashed we can fix it!”

“Teddy, kiss him, that solves everything.”

Teddy just rolls his eyes at Cassie, who suggested that, and shakes his head. “It didn’t work.”

“I recommend you try easing young Billy into it. Take him familiar places-“

“Easier said than done,” Kate mutters darkly, and William feels himself agreeing with her.

“And see how that works. I’ll research what this could be but right now, he feels exactly like Billy does.” Doctor Strange looks worried, kind of like a benevolent, concerned uncle, and William resists the urge to toss lightning in his face, which is unusual, because he normally doesn’t resist those urges at all. 

He blames slumming it on this strange and unfathomable behavior.

He leaves after a short conversation with Teddy and Kate that William doesn’t care about at all. He’s too busy reigning in his anger at Strange to pay attention, too busy breathing through the rage and the temptation to blast the man off the face of the earth. It takes Grandfather’s scowl, the one that says that blasting people doesn’t further the reputation of the House to wind William down, and by the time he’s calmed down and regained the ability to speak the Young Avengers agree to scatter and deal with it in the morning. Teddy follows William and Tommy back at a distance that would make Rictor consider him for a position as a guard. “I’m not brainwashed,” he says to his twin, or the boy who should be his twin, but it’s the only comfort he can manage.  
Tommy looks a little thoughtful for a minute, and puts his arm around William’s shoulders. “I know, little brother,” he says. But he doesn’t offer a way home, a way to fix this, and the prickles of cold in Williams stomach are disturbingly painful.

\---- 

Billy wakes up the next morning to the persistent and altogether irritating ringing of a cell phone. Initially this is confusing: Billy's phone is programmed with ringtones, and his default is _People are Strange_ for anyone he doesn't know. Teddy, who is less obsessed with all things that beep, has his ringtone set as _Soul Sister_ , by Train, which Billy thinks is distressingly top-40s but it is what it is, and then for some reason Doctor Strange is the only one who got his own personal ringtone and that’s _Milkshake_ , and Billy just accepts his boyfriend is a massive _nerd_ (also, every time he tries to change it Teddy not only changes it back but changes his iPhone's password, and Billy can no longer play Angry Birds and beat Teddy's score, so he's pretty much given up on the ringtone thing).

The phone goes silent for a long minute, and Billy lies there, pondering his surroundings before he remembers where he is: in the bed of his other-reality twin (actually this feels very _Fringe_ -y and Billy's not sure he's comfortable with that) masquerading as a prince. At the exact same moment the cell phone goes off again, ringing with no thought or mercy to the fact that it's _oh, god, it's five-thirty_ , Billy thinks, _Eli isn't supposed to exist in this world-_

And so he does the only thing he can think of to shut it up. 

"Hello?"

The voice on the other end is deep and loud and most importantly, _fast_. Billy's sure that if he hadn't spent time with Tommy it would be absolutely incoherent. As it is, it's hard for his sleep addled brain to keep up, but fortunately practice manages to fill in the blanks. "How could you and your twin leave that dinner _early_? You're supposed to be the responsible one, William, the one I can count on not to do anything _stupid_ , and then that boy goes and cries all about your sordid escapades to the press, I thought you were smart enough to keep them _in line_! I don't care what you did or with who but Alice spent the entire night on call with the palace PR staff and this mess is coming out of your accounts!"

There's a pause, possibly so Billy can defend himself, but all that comes out of his mouth is an articulate, "Uhhh..."

"William!" The angry voice on the other end just sounds angrier. "What do you have to say about this? I'm the one who has to deliver the news to your grandfather if Alice can't suppress this!"

"Uncle...Pietro?" Billy tries, rubbing his eyes. He's never called anyone _Uncle_ in his life - his mother only had two sisters and his father was an only child - but he suspects that given the speed of speech it's a pretty fair assumption. "It's five-thirty," he adds plaintively.

"If I wanted the obvious I would be on the phone with _Thomas_ ," Pietro hisses. "Are you _high_?"

"What? No!" Billy says, groping his way out of the bed so he can put his feet on the floor firmly. It's a way his mother taught him to not just wake up but to remember where he is but to connect to _who_ he is. It was during that weird point in his early adolescence where he couldn't find his own features in his parent's face - possibly the fact that his own were vaguely distorted with puckering acne scars had something to do with it, but Billy doesn't like to think about it - and his mom had made him sit and figure it out. _The floor grounds you,_ she had said when he told her that doing that motion had made him feel better. _It reminds you that you're real._

He needs all the help he can get, he figures. "Sorry, Uncle....Pietro," he adds lamely, hoping that William doesn't call him _your highness_ or something. "We left because-"

"I don't care," Pietro interrupts. "I don't care if you left because you're _dying_. The next party you don't leave for _any reason at all_. Frankly I'll be glad when we're back in Genosha and Father can handle you and your insufferable twin once more."

The phone clicks and Billy stares at it, wondering what just happened. It rings a second later, and when Billy picks it up he can't even get a _hello_ in before Pietro bellows, "And call your mother!"

The phone clicks shut and Billy is bewildered. Does Pietro always talk to him (William?) that way? Billy misses his family, then, and it’s both piercing and surprising. He’s never spent so much time away from them except when he was in prison (and that Billy misses his family, then, and it’s both piercing and surprising. He’s never spent so much time away from them except when he was in prison (and that doesn’t count because he can’t even remember that the way it actually happened) and one time when he was 12 and his mom had sent him to sleepaway camp in Vermont, but he had still talked to them every other day. Is this how other families talk to each other? He expects that brusqueness out of his team leader (Eli has said worse at five-thirty in the morning) but not out of a _family member_. As if on cue, Rictor takes this opportunity to amble in. "Your highness?"

Billy looks up from the tangle of sheets and the phone, and runs a hand through his hair. "Pietro called."

"His highness called me earlier," Rictor informs him, closing the door behind him. "He gave me very strict orders regarding the treatment of you and your twin in the days to come."

"That sounds ominous," Billy mutters, setting the phone down. Rictor laughs a little. "I hope that's a good laugh and not the laugh of a man who knows I'm royally _screwed_."

Rictor shakes his head. "I don't know what's gotten into you," he says, and it's tinged with an emotion that Billy's sleep deprived brain can't quite pinpoint. "Go back to sleep, your highness."

Billy nods and flops back on the bed, but he can't sleep at all. All he can do is mutter spells that bounce around in his head, wondering how the hell he's going to get home.

\-----

It's unbearable, William decides as he picks through a rack of clothes with Cassie on one side, Tommy on the other and Kate bringing up the rear. If he looks across the store he can see Teddy and Eli huddled against a display stand muttering at each other, and he doesn't know or care where Jonas is. So far, plan "socialize William into Billy once more" is going terribly: possibly because William doesn't think it will actually _work_ , as he is, as he has explained, " _not Billy, I don't care what that Doctor Strange says, and how do you know he's even really a doctor_?"

But Kate seems to think that this is at least a plan to try and William had hopes that doing it for a day would get them off his back so he could go back to bashing his magical head against the interdimensional wall that separates him from _sanity_ and a world where he never has to do his laundry because someone is always there to do it for him.

However, now it's been five days of this ridiculousnesses. First they took him to the Statue of Liberty and Teddy showed him, covertly, the spot where they had kissed for the first time. Cassie took him to the Met and insisted that he loved sitting in the Egyptian Room and just taking in the atmosphere and watching the tourists. Kate and Eli double-teamed him and took him to an apartment in Brooklyn that belonged to an extremely cranky man named Bucky ( _My name is James,_ he insisted, but Eli just crossed his arms and Kate muttered, _Bucky_ and so that was that) who rolled his eyes at the whole story and claimed that _brainwashing didn't work that way_.

Actually William had liked Bucky, but probably not the way that Eli or Kate had expected. First off, he was _hot_ , and William would have tried something if he hadn't been sitting between Captain Vein-in-his-Forehead-that-Wraps-Around-His-Head and The Little Human Girl Who _Could_. But mostly, Bucky let his opinions about everything involved in this ridiculous escapade run rampant, and most of them boiled down to, _you kids are idiots_.

William couldn't help but approve of his attitude, but Bucky led them through the apartment anyway, showing them old (and presumably rare, with the way that Eli gruffly but reverently handled them) comics and propaganda posters, all featuring Captain America. William had heard of him, of course, but only in an abstract way - he was an old superhero back when Grandfather was still in Auschwitz, he fought Hitler. But he was irrelevant, now. No one talked about Captain America anymore, and when William had said as much Bucky crossed his arms and pointed out that he would have probably preferred it that way.

Eli hadn't liked that answer very much.

Tommy even took him to the prison that he had been kept in and pointed things out from a hill overlooking the building. That day William almost wanted to believe that he was Billy, just so he would understand this part of his twin, this part that was separate and unknown and foreign. No one holds a member of the House of Magnus prisoner and survives the experience, not when the head of the House was Erik Lensherr and their history was so fraught with the kind of prison designed to not just kill, but _exterminate_.

William wanted to level the prison from their high vantage point, but Tommy stopped him. "Young Avengers don't kill, man," he had said, but there was that bitter, displeased tone to the words, the kind that suggested that it was a mantra that didn't mean anything anymore.

But Tommy had to live in this world, and he had asked, so William hadn't.

“So,” Cassie says, forcing William to pay attention to the store once again, “When are the Kaplans coming home?”

That causes Tommy and Kate to swivel their heads over to look at the youngest member of this team, and William is suddenly aware of the intense scrutiny on him, which is odd, considering that he should be used to this by now. 

“Crap,” Tommy says. He looks at Kate and Kate looks at Tommy and William feels a little ignored then, which is odd considering half a second earlier he was feeling a little too looked at. “They get back in a couple of days-“

“Well if he’s not normal by then-“

“We’re going to have to figure something out-“

“You think you can fool _Rebecca Kaplan-_ ”

At that point Teddy and Eli come over, attracted by the distress, clearly, in some kind of Young Avengers mating call, William decides. They start chattering at each other and he goes back to looking at the rack of clothes _god what is his life_ , he just wants to go home and listen to _Edelweiss_ again, and who buys off the rack anyway? The back of his head itches and he looks up and Tommy is gone, and Kate is on the phone, and Teddy is standing next to him. “I think we should go back,” Teddy says, his voice soft and a little serious. William looks back up at him and wonders, not for the first time, if this is hard for him.

He wonders why Teddy sticks around. He would have left, by now, he knows, but the William has never had a boyfriend. “All right,” he says. “Do we walk?” There’s been a lot of walking on this trip, and he’s really not amused by it.

Teddy seems to find it funny, though. “Yes,” he says. “We’re not that far.”

“I don’t believe that Billy submitted to all this walking,” he says, bristling slightly.

Teddy just looks kind of like he’s heard this too often lately, and it makes William bristle even more. What’s wrong with doubting that anyone would submit to this? He wouldn’t submit to a lot of things, and this is one of them. Also, drinking the soda from the cornerstore. What do they cut it with, water from the Hudson?

It doesn’t matter, though. They get to the apartment and Tommy is already there, and Kate beat them by ten minutes (to be fair William got distracted by a street performer and Teddy was probably way more tolerant than any person should be) and when they walk in, Tommy’s hair is _black_ and slick with goo.

“Oh. Hey.” Tommy looks absolutely unconcerned. “We gotta wait another half hour before it’s ready.” He opens a magazine.

“Do you really need to know 50 tricks that make your man go crazy?” William asks, plucking the Cosmo from Tommy’s hands.

Tommy plucks it back. “Of course, if I have to masquerade as _you_ -“

They’re interrupted by Eli, who has walked in at this point, of course, “What is going on?” he asks in a half-whisper, half-yell (William has to learn how to do that, he figures if he can manage that he can basically start ruling Genosha now), the vein going around his head thrumming dangerously hard.

Tommy sits on the couch, remarkably careful not to let his hair touch. “Well Kate and I figure that if the Kaplans come back, if we say that I had my hair dyed in some weird magic accident, we can cover up when William does something weird by saying that I’m going through PTSD.”

“That doesn’t sound like something Kate would say,” Eli says.

Kate comes out from the bathroom with a box of hairdye. “That’s because Kate didn’t say that,” she explains, one hand on her hip. “But you have to admit that we need something to distract them if they show up before we can, you know, figure out how to unbrainwash him.”

“This is a bad idea,” Teddy says. “I mean he might be able to fool Billy’s dad for a little while, if he keeps his mouth mostly shut and kind of looks sullen and cranky, but he can’t fool Rebecca Kaplan. Are you guys deranged? _She cannot be fooled_ , it’s like some superpower!”

“You fooled her,” Tommy points out.

“ _I_ fooled her for exactly three hours, two and a half of which I spent locked in Billy’s room, hoping she wouldn’t knock and ask questions,” Teddy retorts. “Also, I’m a shape-shifter so you know, my eyes are the right color.”

Tommy looks over at William and William looks at Tommy and at the same time they say, “We can figure something out.”

Kate just stares and shakes her head. “This is officially getting into X-files territory.”

“Do you think we can do that anywhere? Because I can see some uses in gambling,” Tommy adds cheerily.

William shrugs, then. “I don’t really see the problem. Why do you care if she thinks I’m Billy? She’s not your mother.”

There’s silence for a minute, and then, for the first time in his life, William feels a slipping sideways in the bond he has with his twin, like someone is sucking the air out of the room and he can’t magic it back. It’s like an assassination attempt on his _soul_ , slow and poisonous. “Dude,” Tommy says, a frown creasing between his eyes. “You can’t just _say_ that.”

William feels like he’s foundering like a fish laid bare on the shore of a river, inches from water but unable to flop back in. “What?”

“She’s not my mom but that doesn’t mean I want her to get hurt. She really loves you,” Tommy says, putting the magazine down. “What kind of messed up family are you from?”

Air, William thinks. There’s no air in the room, there’s no air and he’s suffocating, how can he be suffocating, why is everyone just _staring_ like that? “Don’t talk about my family, you’re the one who wants it, you’re practically salivating for Grandfather,” he says suddenly, gasping. _My_ family, he says, so proprietary. It’s always been _our_ family, they’ve always been a unit, the twins, the two souls lay bare against each other, two people built off the same template. 

“That’s not what that’s about,” Tommy says, hissing. “Why don’t you get that?”

There’s a lot that William doesn’t get. Why this world has mutants who don’t fight back. Why he can’t see his mother or his Grandfather or his uncle or aunt. Why he has to think about how he uses his powers all the time. Why Teddy’s eyes bother him, or why Kate’s judgment makes him feel ashamed. Why he’s not enough, why isn’t he enough for Tommy, he should be, they’ve been enough all their lives, haven’t they?

“You had me!” William replies, grasping, but the bond, the support, it’s still not back, there’s nothing tethering him to the ground but he’s not flying, how is that possible? Tommy just looks at him, and William desperately wants Thomas, he desperately wants to wake up and see Rictor standing guard and to hear his mother’s voice and there are only three parts to his heart, and none of them are _here_ and he can’t feel his magic, not without _Thomas_.

He doesn’t know how he got to the front step – actually, he suspects that he walked there in some kind of haze, because there’s no faint smell of ozone, but he couldn’t tell either way. He sits there and stews, a seeping black cloud taking over his head. He doesn’t know how to vocalize it. There’s a secret, and he knows it, a secret that the only thing that someone who is very lonely holds. It’s a secret that’s a truth, and the truth is this: the only thing that a lonely person wants is for someone to come and tell them, unprompted, _I know how lonely you are, I see you, and I’m right here_. William always had Thomas to say that, to hold him together, but here he doesn’t have anything or anyone. He’s flying apart without a tether to the world. 

There are steps behind him - one, two, three, quiet. He looks back and expects Tommy, or Teddy, but it’s Kate who finally sits down next to him. “My dad pretends I play lacrosse.”

That doesn’t make any sense. “I don’t care,” William says dully, even though he doesn’t mean it, not in a biting, arching way. 

Kate seems to know that, because she keeps talking. “He pretends my bruises and stamina and five am runs are from lacrosse. I’ve told him otherwise but he keeps pretending. Eli’s grandma sews his costume up and cries because she thinks that the serum from his grandfather’s blood will destroy Eli’s brain, too. Cassie’s mom stops talking to her for days on end. Teddy and Tommy and Jonas don’t even have parents – although to be fair,” she says, tilting her head, “I don’t really think it bothers Jonas very much.”

William can’t follow this logic, his brain is fuzzy. “What’s your point?” he asks.

Kate stretches her legs out in front of her and tries to catch his eye, but mostly fails. “My point is that we all – all of us – kind of rely on the Kaplans. They do a lot for us, you know? And I know your Grandfather means a lot to you and so does your mother – I mean, it’s obvious from the way you keep talking about them to Tommy, but the Kaplans matter to us, and they really matter to Tommy. They took him in on the basis that he’s Billy’s mysterious mystical twin, you know.”

William moves slightly closer to Kate, and he doesn’t know why. Without Tommy’s emotions to ground him he can’t feel haughty, or regal, or even fake it. He wants her touch because he wants to feel connected to something, like the world hasn’t abandoned him, so he leans just slightly, pressing against her shoulder. “You don’t even like my family,” he says, but there’s no more venom in his voice.

“I don’t like powergames,” Kate replies. “And it sounds like your family plays a lot of them.”

William doesn’t respond right away, because he knows it’s true. His grandfather taught him how to play before he could even speak, every word is dictated by what kind of power it displays. “It’s how you rule.”

“It sounds like a really lonely way to live, though,” Kate says. “Trust me, I go to high school on the Upper East Side, I know. I didn’t have friends until I met the Young Avengers.”

“Is this the part where we bond?” William asks, but he can’t even manage a sneer. There’s no joy in it, now. There’s just blandness, a blank feeling. 

Kate shakes her head. “Listen, I know you want to go home, and I know it’s not easy dealing with us, but can you put aside all your issues and just help out with Billy’s parents? We’ve been helping you all week, and you’re kind of a pain in the neck, so just return the favor already.” 

William looks over at her, and he nods slightly. He thought that there was only space in his heart for two people, his mother and his brother, but now he’s not so sure if he had it right. Maybe it wasn’t space he lacked, but people to fill it, the great empty void inside himself made all the more obvious by the sudden burst of errant affection that he feels. There’s a moment, a pause, and suddenly he can feel the vestigial approval from Tommy, and when he turns around he sees a green-eyed replica of himself, his hair already black and dry. 

\----

When Rictor said that he was under orders, he meant it.

Beyond the fact that the ceremony was endless, the clothes were itchy and the people _pathologically_ boring (seriously, was there a a law or something, that rich entitled people were also _ridiculously boring_? With so much money why couldn't they find hobbies that are interesting?) the schedule was relentless. The week went on and lunches and dinners and meetings with diplomats where Thomas did most of the talking were ceaseless.

It was like a march and Billy was the hapless camp follower or something. Thomas kept assuring him that they would find a way to get him back, but Billy suspected it wasn't a huge priority for the speedster: actually, he started to think that he bought their cover story (William hit his head and was seen by a doctor so yes, he's fine, thank you, but a little confused sometimes so forgive any oddities). It's just that every night Billy meditated and went through the exercises that Doctor Strange had taught him during their very brief meetings, and every night he felt like he hit a wall. It was as though his magic existed here, and nowhere else.

But he knows it exists elsewhere, because he's been there. He misses Teddy like he misses a limb, and he knows that he didn't dream that life up, no matter what Thomas would like him to think.

The highlight is the daily conversation with Princess Wanda. At first Thomas had been a little hesitant about handing over the phone (he told Billy that she was really easy to upset, and Billy didn't want to upset her, but soon Thomas couldn't keep telling his mother no, so he handed the phone over. _Call her mother_ Thomas had mouthed.) but it had been easy after the initial worry.

He called her mother and she called him William and she laughed at his anecdotes about New York Elite mutantkind and softly told him about her dinners with the King and assured him that he would be home soon. It was funny how at first he didn't realize she meant Genosha, and for an instant he thought she _knew_ , but then she elaborated that she would have his favorite meal ready and it was so jarring that he had to give the phone back to Thomas to finish the conversation.

But after that, it had been easy. She was so kind and soft-spoken, and she missed them, and it was his mother, his real mother, even though she wasn't that, either. She wasn't the right Wanda, no matter what Billy's heart wanted to believe. The words _home to Genosha_ didn't mean anything, except possibly an execution sentence. Death by Grandfather-powered firing squad.

On the sixth day of his wacky prince adventures, the maid brings in a letter on a silver tray. At first Billy isn't sure what to make of it - he's still not used to the idea of a maid, let alone a _silver tray with mail on it_ , and he's pretty sure he shouldn't open mail intended for someone else. But considering he probably shares DNA with the guy, Billy figures that he's got some kind of right to open that mail. That, and the fact that this trip ends sooner than later and he has to figure out a solution to his _not home_ scenario sooner than later lends a sort of nihilistic approach to all his decisions, currently.

Also, according to the maid, it was hand delivered by a young man who claims to have gone to boarding school with William, and after the disastrous first night's fancy shindig, Billy would be lying if he didn't kind of want to know more.

"I absolutely am my mother's son," he mutters to himself as he opens the letter, but he doesn't mean Wanda.

The letter is less a letter and more a note: an address of where Vincent Smythe is staying, and a request, written in tilted script, to please come see him.

Billy wants to turn it down at first, because the first meeting had been so strange and weird and almost traumatic. But the more he thinks about it, the more he wants to go. If he can't get home before they have to go back to Genosha, then he has to become the Grandson that King Erik Lensherr of the House of Magnus expects, at least until he can figure out the right spell that will slip him home sideways. He needs to know how far William went, and he can’t ask Thomas, even if Thomas does know the answers, or perhaps because Thomas _will_ know the answer.

Naturally, there's no slipping the bodyguard detail, so Rictor insists on coming along, telling him in the most passive-aggressive manner any human has ever concocted that he thinks that this is, absolutely, and without a doubt, a terrible, terrible idea. "Your highness, I know your power is strong but you have to promise me that you'll teleport to your twin and Julian at the first sight of any trouble."

"I'm not going to leave you," Billy says, because that's out of the question. "Besides, we're both uh, Omega-level, right?" That's the terminology, isn't it? God, why didn't he take mutant studies in high school? Was there a reason? Beyond, you know, that it wasn't offered in public school in New York City?

He knew he should have learned more about the X-men.

"I would much prefer that in case of a fight you leave me to it. I'm trained for it, and you're the heir to Genosha," Rictor says as they drive. Actually, Billy's decided that the best part of being a prince, beyond the fact that people are bafflingly nice to him all the time, is that he gets to ride around in a limo with the little diplomat's flags attached.

Okay the police escort is kind of irritating, but hey, if it can get you from the Upper East Side to anywhere else in Manhattan in less than ten minutes, who is Billy to complain?

But in either case, Billy doesn't reply to Rictor's worry - he just stares out the window as they pass buildings that are like Kate's in their majesty and splendor, and the streets of the Upper East Side of Manhattan filled with people who, back home, would be hiding their skin colors or their feathers or their fantastic ability to turn their hands into snakes.

There are some things that Billy kind of wishes he could unsee.

They stop in front of a stately townhouse. "I really beg you to reconsider this," Rictor says, looking up at the steps. "Your highness, I know I'm to allow you your freedoms but this boy could be dangerous."

"What's his power?" Billy asks, because he knows that Rictor knows. "Please," he adds, belatedly, the voice of his bubbe screaming in his ear about bad manners.

Rictor sighs. "He has very mild weather manipulation abilities. Mist, rain, sunshine, all in very centralized locations. He doesn't fly or create lightning."

"I think I can take on the Weatherman," Billy replies, getting out of the car. "I mean how dangerous can a kid who can't even electrocute me be? What's he going to do? Fog me to death?"

"You sound more like your brother with each passing day, your highness," Rictor says in a tone that could suggest he's bored, but could also suggest that the comment isn't a compliment.

Just for that, Billy lets him knock (not because, you know, Rictor would have insisted anyway) and the maid that lets them in looks Rictor over with an appreciative glance. Most maids, Billy's discovered, are humans, and almost all of them would give anything to sleep with the few, the proud, the Genoshan Royal Guard. Frankly, it freaked Billy out a little when he found out that Julian was banging the maid, but that's possibly because he discovered that particular fact while he was wandering the penthouse looking for something to eat and there are some things that are just appetite killing, and apparently that was one of them.

Thomas had laughed when Billy had screamed, and that particular maid hadn't been back since, which made Billy feel guilty because she probably got fired but only made Julian laugh, and Billy wasn't sure how that made him feel. Frankly he wasn't used to being a member of the privileged race, and especially not of the privileged family. He wasn't sure he liked it.

The extra security does a quick sweep of the townhouse, and Billy feels a pressure in his stomach build while it happens, but once the sweep is over the maid shows them to a fancy little parlor that Billy feels about three economic classes too low on the totem pole to actually sit in, but when Rictor takes his place by the door and Billy walks in, Vincent stands up, fidgeting. “I didn’t think you would come,” he says, his fingers in his hair. “I thought you would say no.”

“I have really bad self-preservation instincts,” Billy replies suddenly, like he’s forgetting that he’s playing a part. Vincent just stares for a second, and Billy sits. Vincent stays standing for a moment, before he moves in closer. Billy does his best not to recoil – William wouldn’t recoil, he thinks, and just looks up at him.

Wow, those long silences are way more awkward in person than the movies led Billy to believe. 

“Why did you come?” Vincent finally asks, but he stays where he is.

Billy looks up, and summons his haughtiest expression, and he hopes it’s not coming off as constipated. Under his breath, he mutters a spell – one that had to word right, one that would make it harder for Thomas to find him if he gets upset. He wants to not get interrupted, and his twin’s speed plus his protective nature would make that difficult.

Rictor makes a slight noise, and both boys look over at him. Billy lifts his chin slightly – like _leave_ , and Rictor makes a face. Actually, that’s not really true, what Rictor actually does is tighten the corners of his mouth and moves his head to the side, which is the Rictor equivalent of _making a face_ , but he eventually steps out of the parlor and closes the door.

The thing is that Billy isn’t sure what to expect. He’s pretty sure he should probably anticipate a knife or something – what if this is like _Swimfan_ and he’s gonna end up with a knife in his stomach or something? – but he lets it happen anyway. The man with the gun is on the other side of the door, and Vincent is still standing there. It takes Billy another moment. “Tell me exactly what I did.”

“You were there,” Vincent replies, but at least he’s not shaking, and Billy takes that as the go-ahead.

“Just…indulge me,” he continues, trying to channel his inner Sarah Michelle Gellar circa _Cruel Intentions_.

By some miracle, Vincent doesn’t sense fear. He just takes a long moment and nods. “We met on your first week. Kyle Hanson had been following you around and you saw me and you just…you looked at me. I didn’t know I wanted it so bad until you looked away.

“After that, you made him send me a message. He looked so angry, like he could have killed me, but I went and did what you said. I came up to the study room, and you were there, at the desk, and you were just looking at me. You wouldn’t – you wouldn’t let me kiss you. You said I didn’t deser-“ he takes a moment, and breathes, and comes in closer. “And I didn’t. You weren’t wrong. And then you told me if I did a good job, if I made you-“

Billy has to keep his face still, even as his insides roil. “You kept me around. You let me…stay with you. Not sleep in your bed, but stay with you, if you needed anything. You let me suck your cock, as long as I worshipped you.” He takes another moment and he’s shaking again. “Is this good? Am I doing good?”

Billy has to respond, then, even though he doesn’t think he can speak. “Yes,” he finally manages, pressing his tongue to the top of his soft palette, like his mother taught him, to focus on staying calm. He wants to ask Vincent to stop – he has to ask Vincent to stop, but the other boy doesn’t, he just keeps talking.

“You even had Michael Strauss give me head, once. To reward me, you said. You let me put my head in your lap while it happened, you touched my face, and it was-“ there’s a pause. “Then you stopped, one day. I begged for you but you wouldn’t, you had someone else, you had me please him, you said if I did it well enough you would let me back but you didn’t, and I-“

He’s on his knees next to Billy, his hands on Billy’s knees. Billy clamps his hands over Vincent’s because he can’t force himself to break this hold, he can’t do it, this boy is _damaged_ and part of him feels responsible. “Let me,” Vincent says. “It’ll be good. My last boyfriend – after you, months later, he said it was good, but it was always your face, please, please let me.”

“Did I ever use magic?” Billy is horrified at himself, then, because he shouldn’t have to ask this. He shouldn’t have to, hearing this story, disjointed and sad as it is from this boy who looks like Teddy. 

God he misses Teddy. The thought makes his face hot, uncomfortable. 

Vincent hears him, because, it occurs to Billy, that Vincent is absolutely enraptured. “You don’t need magic for this. You didn’t at school.”

There’s a pause of relief, but it’s sickening at the same time. He didn’t need magic to destroy someone’s life so casually, so simply, to reduce him to this. William didn’t do it with magic but he still did it, because he was bored, or lonely, or because he _wanted_ to.

Billy wonders if whatever that’s in William that caused this, that led him to this is in him too. How similar are they?

Vincent’s hands are at his belt, then, and Billy lets out a cry of alarm which he realizes too late is a _bad thing_ because Rictor is through the door and between them in less than an instant. “No,” Billy cries out, because Rictor is restraining Vincent in some tactical hold that is probably designed for terrorists, “Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him, he didn’t hurt me, it’s all right!”

Rictor takes a moment before he releases the hold, and Billy walks up to the other boy, who is shaking. “Here,” he says, knowing that this is something William would never do, because honestly it’s something he would never do with someone who wasn’t Teddy. Billy hates to be touched casually – no, not _hate_ , nothing that strong, but he doesn’t like it, he avoids it, it makes him uncomfortable, and at that moment he realizes that it probably makes William uncomfortable too. He reaches up and around Vincent’s neck and hugs him, and holds him for a second, a second that turns into a minute. 

Vincent lets out a choked sob, but it’s so soft that even Billy, whose ear is an inch from his mouth, has trouble hearing it. “Why would you make me beg for something you would never give me?”

Billy looks up and shakes his head, disengaging. “Because I could.”

\----

“His Highness won’t be happy,” Rictor says as they sit in the limo. They’ve been at the hotel for ten minutes already but Billy hasn’t felt like leaving the lush interior. The truth is he doesn’t feel like doing anything. There’s an elation that whatever William did, he didn’t cross that line, the line of magic on a person to do something against their will, but the fact that he feels elated about that isn’t any measure of satisfaction. Instead it’s just darkness there, the brink of big D Depression crawling up Billy’s spine.  
Billy nods. “Well, his highness can suck it,” he says, crossing his arms and sinking back into the plush seat. He thinks about what his mom would say. She warned him about this, about his neurosis reaching a plateau, about how she worried about him. He wonders if King Erik worries about his Grandson’s mental health.

He doesn’t even realize that he’s lifted the spell until Thomas is in the limo next to him, breathing hard. “Get out,” he says to Rictor, and Rictor turns to look at Billy. 

Apparently, that’s a mistake, because Thomas yells this time. “ _Don’t_ question me, get _out_!” 

Rictor goes to leave, and as he opens the door to let himself out he squeezes Billy’s hand once. It’s slightly covert in feeling, even though Thomas can see it. It feels like support, or conspiracy. Whatever it is, it’s reassuring, even though Billy doesn’t know Rictor that well, he’s been the only person outside of Thomas who he talks to on an hourly basis, and that’s sunk in.

“You can’t do that,” Thomas hisses, and Billy knows he’s not talking about holding hands with the help. “You can’t just _disappear_ like that, it’s not _right_ , it’s not fair.” Thomas is breathing through his mouth, which is something that Billy has _never_ seen Tommy do, but to be fair Billy hasn’t seen Tommy do a lot of things that Thomas has – including walk around the apartment naked, Billy will never get that image out of his head (also, he needs to remember to ask if Tommy is circumcised because _Thomas_ is, but that is irrelevant, thank you, brain). But he can feel his stomach tighten in response, tense up. “You can’t just _leave_ me without you, you don’t _understand-_ ”

“I’m not William,” Billy starts.

Thomas doesn’t seem to hear him. “And go to see someone who upsets you, do you think I didn’t know the second you vanished where you were? Why do you need to know who he is? He’s not worth your time! He’s just some _kid_ that William took in and got bored with, he’s not even _whole_ anymore, Grandfather would throw a _fit_ , you can’t just leave!” Thomas’ hands are in Billy’s shirt, squeezing tight. His eyes are so startling green, and it takes Billy a second to realize it’s because they’re also so _red_.

Once, when Billy was little, and his youngest brother was still a baby, he had crawled in his mother’s lap and had told her that she didn’t need to take care of the baby, because the baby cried too much and he should learn to be strong. Of course, Billy had been seven at the time so his ridiculous logic and possibly child-abuse philosophy was ignored, but his mother had made him sit and explain what he was really feeling, and finally he figured out that he was trying to tell his mom that he was lonely, he wanted attention, that no one else was giving him what he wanted.

Thomas’ face is the mirror of that feeling, but Billy doesn’t feel a lot of compassion. “You don’t care that he did all those things.”

“Of course I don’t,” Thomas says incredulously. “Why would I?”

“Because they were terrible. You didn’t see him, you didn’t know, he _cried_ and I wasn’t even mean, William destroyed people’s lives because he was _bored_ and you think it’s funny,” Billy accuses. He can’t think of anything witty – that’s a sure sign he’s angry. He can’t feel Thomas – all he can feel is rage.

Thomas is gaping like a fish. “Don’t do this,” he begs, like he can’t breathe. His face looks like someone is tearing him into two, and his fingers are bloodless in the incredibly expensive shirt that Billy is wearing. The shirt belongs to someone else. This entire affair, the mess, it’s like the shirt. “You can’t hate me for this, how can you do this to me? Choose some slut over me?”

“I’m not your brother!” Billy protests, he knows it, why can’t Thomas figure that out? What’s so difficult about the concept? The worst part, though, isn’t the look on Thomas’ face, the expression of betrayal, but how hard it was to say those words. Even in the face of something so derisive (Kate would have punched him) Billy can’t stop the shock of the pain, the searing between them.

Thomas hisses, “You are. You are every inch of William. You are _just_ like him. The neurosis, the way you move, the way you turn your head. The rage you feel, the fear you feel, when you feel it, it’s _all the same_. You don’t even know it – you have the same humor, the same habits, the same way you _brush your teeth_ , you’re the same _person_ , he’s just the person you would have been if you were raised here instead of in some place where your own twin doesn’t know what you’re worth!”

The truth of the statement is like ice-cold water, then. Billy puts his hands around Thomas’ fists, but not to pry them away. They sit like that a long time, their foreheads pressed together as if they can meld that way, overlap, but Billy isn’t thinking about Thomas.

He’s thinking, instead, about those words. About his mom and how she taught him to breathe, to not let whatever dark urge he felt rear its ugly head any time he felt it. About his dad and aborted attempts at baseball games and failed football catches in the park that led to ice-cream and a movie instead. About how his mom bought him his very first comic book when he was six because _children should have something to allow their imaginations to grow, there are studies._  
About brothers who are not Tommy and fights and war and making up afterwards and the trials and tribulations of being Rebecca Kaplan’s son and how _lonely_ it must have been to grow up in a place where the entirety of your worth is based on how well you perform for a media circus and a Grandfather whose standards were so impossibly high that the only person to turn to was your twin.

 _This is the person I am_ , Billy thinks, his arms going around Thomas. “Are you okay?” he asks, and he thinks about Tommy, who is even lonelier than Thomas. Tommy would never submit to a hug like this.  
Thomas breathes in deep, not letting go of Billy, not even loosening. “Do you understand?”

“I understand. I know how lonely you are,” Billy replies, because he does, “and I see you. You don’t think it’s funny, but it doesn’t matter, what he does.” He takes a moment. “It doesn’t matter because everyone else wants us for something, or wants something from us.” It’s incredibly isolating. “Because there’s no way to be honest except with each other, is there? Even the guards lie.” He thinks about Rictor’s face, Rictor who is genuinely trying, but there are times his face shuts out whatever it is that Billy is saying, like he doesn’t want to process something he might have to explain away. “Because no one can see us. So no one else exists. I’m right here.”

Thomas nods. “It doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is us.” The timbre of his voice is so hesitant, like a little boy. There is no more of the prince there, the self-assurance is gone. His knuckles are so white, the plush of Billy’s shirt crushed. He knows it will be damp when Thomas lets go. 

“The only thing that matters is us,” Billy repeats, because even though it’s not Billy’s truth, it’s William’s truth, and here that is the only truth that Billy needs to understand. It is the truth that Thomas needs. It is the truth that powers the world.

\----

“So the Kaplans get back in exactly four hours,” Teddy begins. He is holding, in one hand, a feather duster, and in the other hand he has a bottle of Pledge. “Our mission, should you choose to accept it, is to clean the apartment, and when they get here, Tommy,” he uses the feather duster to point, “will bribe the younger two Kaplan sons into a temper tantrum which will be blamed on exhaustion from visiting their grandmother for a week. Bribe materials.”

“Got ‘em,” Tommy says, holding up a bag of Mars Bars. 

“Then Kate will call and suggest a team bonding session at a sports event which we will attend because I really want to go, and there, we will stay until past the Kaplan’s bedtime, at which point we will return.” Teddy sounds a lot like Rictor, laying out security plans, and it’s bizarrely refreshing. William is watching this unfold from the couch. 

“This is all well and good,” Eli responds, his face as sour as ever, “but have you thought that tomorrow he has to go to school?”

“Look we’re taking one thing at a time and-“

Whatever Teddy was going to say is interrupted by Eli’s ass singing _all I ever wanted, all I ever needed is here in your arms._ Eli scrabbles to answer, and after a moment he snaps, “Oh, you’ve got to be _kidding_ me.”

“What?” Teddy asks, suddenly looking worried. 

Eli’s face is unimpressed as he finishes the phone call and hangs up. “That was Kate. She says she’s out at Union Square and she needs backup. She says it’s her and Cassie against Swarm.”

William sits up then, and Tommy groans, “Dude, can’t that guy get a _hobby_? I mean he could probably make a killing selling honey to neo-Nazis or something!”

It only takes them ten minutes to get into costume and down to Union Square – William helped transport them but he refused to wear the cape, and Eli yelled a lot about civilian and danger until Teddy pointed out that William could easily stay out of the way.  
At least, that was the _plan_. William is flying over the fight because he wanted to see the Nazi – in his world it’s a crime to affiliate with the Nazi party even in countries with freedom of speech – but he’s not interested in getting involved.

At least, not until it becomes a Panzer made of bees, and slams into Kate, whose smoke arrows do distressingly little. And then suddenly William feels a surge of distress: he’s not sure where it’s coming from, because it’s not Tommy, who is racing to try and contain some damage, Tommy hasn’t even noticed. This distress is _his_. 

It’s even more mind-boggling because despite the fact that they came to the odd agreement about each other the other day, William doesn’t even really like her that much. All she does is challenge him and annoy him and make him feel uncomfortable, so why he’s suddenly putting himself between her and a panzer made of Nazi bees is a little bizarre, but that’s what he’s doing.

Tommy notices, then, and yells out, and so does Teddy, but it’s too late, he’s there and the panzer is headed towards him and he does the only thing he can think of doing. “ _Stop. Go home._ ”

There’s a blast of magic as the panzer freezes and then disappears, and there’s a sudden _boom_ of magic in his ears that knocks him back and to the ground. When he opens his eyes again he finds breathing is a challenge _god this better not be a running theme with this world_ and the team huddled over him, staring. “Holy crap,” Teddy says. “You saved Kate.”

“I didn’t really need to be saved,” Kate points out, adjusting her glasses, “but thanks, you did keep me from a bunch of bee stings.”

William takes a gasp of air and closes his eyes again. He’ll never mock Rictor and Julian again, he decides at that moment, because fighting actually _hurts_. “Welcome-“ he wheezes, and coughs, and lays his head back against the pavement. He hears Vision say something about _output of energy_ and _mimicking conditions_ but he doesn’t care; he can only focus on Tommy’s eyes above him.

“Uh, guys,” Tommy says, and reaches down to pick William up. William doesn’t protest this. “I’m going to run him home, I’ll be right back for cleanup.”

Teddy looks like he’s about to protest but the world blurs around them and the next thing William sees is the bed, and then blackness.

\-----

“Are you packed?” Thomas asks, sitting on Billy’s bed. He looks casual, but Billy can trace the slightest hint of anxiety – the kind that’s half-excited and half-terrified. 

Honestly, Billy kind of relates, only if he were going to add another half, it would be _half-out-of-his-mind_. But instead he breathes like his mom taught him and nods. “Yeah, I mean, there wasn’t that much to pack, the maid did most of it.”

“You’ll like the Summer Palace,” Thomas says. “We used to spend a lot of time there when we were small,” he adds, that _we_ so familiar, but Billy doesn’t mind it as much as he did. “I’ll tell Grandfather you’ll be back in Genosha once you suck it up and get over your snit.”

“Are there a lot of snits?” Billy asks carefully. The cover story – that William and Thomas had a fight and that William went to sulk it off was something that Rictor, at least, was willing to say that he had observed, and it would buy them a little time.

“Almost none, so expect a visit from the Palace Therapist or something,” Thomas says. “You don’t have to receive her, though. The guard at the Summer Palace is usually so bored out of their wits they’ll be thrilled to have someone to bully around.” He crosses his legs on the bed. “I’ll come over a lot, too.”

“You really don’t think I’m going to go home?” Billy feels a clench of sickness in his belly. He wants Teddy, and his family, and Tommy. He wants to sit outside on the stoop with Cassie and Jonas and talk about nothing and he wants Kate to make him go shopping for ‘grown up boy clothes that fit just you and not Teddy too’ and he wants Eli to yell at him.

God, he must be more homesick than he thought if he wants Eli to yell at him.

Thomas shrugs. “I think we have to be prepared for either scenario,” he tells Billy, and Billy’s stomach doesn’t unclench. “Hey,” he whispers, and slides his hands to Billy’s shoulders, “it’ll be okay.”

“I feel sick,” Billy mutters. “That’s all.”

“Yeah,” Thomas agrees. “Get some rest. It’ll all look different in the morning.”

Billy flops his head against the pillow, and the world goes dark.

\-----

Billy has a secret, and that’s that he hates dreaming. Between sleep-spells and muttering in his sleep, there’s always something sinister about his dreams. It’s like the edges are bleeding out into reality, and he doesn’t like it. Maybe he was raised on to much Freddy Krueger but he always feels like he should be running from something, and that something should be locked away in his dreams.

But there he is – his mirror image, moving alongside himself. He looks different. Arrogant. The mirror walks around him, and he walks around it, and there’s something wrong here, something pulling at his stomach, the crackling of power, eyes lightning blue. The darkest part of his personality is telling him to destroy it, destroy it before it destroys him, and then Billy opens his mouth to speak.

And falls out of bed.

“Ow, _crud_ ,” he mutters, rubbing his head. He hopes that Rictor doesn’t burst into the room, and he fumbles blindly in the dark for his light switch, finally finding a lamp. “Rictor I’m fi-“ he begins, but then stops.

He’s in his room. It’s not covered in Dazzler wallpaper, it’s not a fancy hotel room, there are no guards. His bed is distressingly well-made and some of his action figures are suspiciously missing, but it’s his room, and he lets out a whoop of joy, which naturally brings his mother tearing into the room. “Billy,” she hisses. “ _It’s two in the morning._ ”

“Mom, _mom_ he cries out, scrabbling up to latch onto her. She’s surprised, he can tell by how she holds her robe closed tight and her body tense, but then she softens, her arms going around him as she holds onto him. “I missed you,” he says into her shoulder, and he realizes how true that is. It’s not that she wasn’t there. His whole life had been written out by the letters his mother had set down, the poetry of her hand against his personality. She had protected him from the loneliness, the splitting fear, the codependency that William and Thomas suffered.

“I was only gone for a week,” she says, petting his hair. “You must have really fallen far, that’s what Theodore said happened.” She pushes him away but only enough to pet his hair and look at his face. “Does your head hurt? Should I wake your father?”  
“No, no,” Billy says, and goes to hug her again. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Billy,” she tells him, her hand in his hair. She pauses and looks at his bed. “Oh, your bed is made. You really must have hit your head.”

\-----

William’s eyes open.

“You know, you’re never going to get enough sleep if you keep doing that,” Thomas says, reclining in his airplane seat, fiddling with his music player. “You’ll be cranky and exhausted and Grandfather will notice and then we’ll all have to deal with his bad mood.”

Ever since he woke up in the hotel room, Rictor looking down at him with a concerned look, saying something about how there was blue light and he had been crying out in his sleep, William hasn’t been able to sleep for more than a few moments at a time, and he knows he’s exhausted and cranky, but he can’t help it. Each time he closes his eyes he sees that other form of himself, opening his mouth the word to destroy the world poised on his lips. He doesn’t know how he knows that’s what that dream was about, but he knows. He knows it’s neurotic and ridiculous, but he can’t help it.

“Shut up,” he says, but it’s fond. “Tell me again.”

“He was weird,” Thomas says, with a limitless patience that he reserves for his twin. He’s said this at least ten times in the past day, but William needs to hear it over and over. “He had all kinds of weird hangups. He met some kid named Vincent from your old school, and he wouldn’t get over it.”

William remembers Vincent. He was good at sucking cock, he had the softest hands, the smoothest skin on his face. “He wasn’t me,” he says, but he knows the truth, and so does Thomas, because Thomas puts his earbuds in so he won’t have to hear anymore, talk anymore. He knows that they are the same, the exact same, more similar than William and Thomas are. The person he would have been if William had been raised away from the Palace, the person he would have been in that world. The person with friends and a boyfriend and no gaping empty hole where connections to the world should be.

The thought is terrifying, overwhelming, even more than Billy in his dream, even more than facing down Swarm, even more terrifying than losing Thomas. He reaches for his twin’s hand and clasps it tight, and Thomas doesn’t look at William then, but clasps his hand back.

Rictor looks over at them for a long moment. He has his own earbuds in, and he doesn’t eavesdrop on the twins anyway, but there is a moment, long and difficult to decipher. He raises his closed fist to his heart in a traditional Genoshan salute, nodding his head at William. “Welcome home,” he mouths, and William feels slightly warmer. He clutches Thomas’ hand, his knuckles white, but there is no more pain. The pain evanesces into warmth, and he closes his eyes again.

\-----

“So again,” Tommy says, and Billy kind of grins. Teddy finally managed to let go of Billy long enough for Billy to say hi to someone else, and it only took about a day. Teddy had told them about the sex, and Billy forgave him right away ( _dude if you had cheated on me with Tommy that’s one thing but he’s pretty much me so don’t worry about it_ , to which Teddy made a gagging noise and hit Billy with a pillow for even suggesting sex with Tommy) but Billy explained he needed to hang out with Tommy for a while, and Teddy said he needed to go to the comic book store anyway.

“I don’t know how we can con Kate into getting it,” Billy says conspiratorially, “but rich people Coke, like the real expensive kind is laced with some kind of addictive property because it is seriously the _best_ I’ve ever had.”

Tommy laughs and stretches his legs out against the steps of the stoop. Billy’s not quite over the black hair thing ( _seriously?_ and _it seemed like a good idea at the time_ ) but it doesn’t seem to matter to Tommy. “And bodyguards?”

“Way more annoying than you’d imagine,” Billy confirms. “I mean they were both good guys, Julian was a little…uh, well, the word I’m looking for is _bizarre_ but whatever, but waiting each time you enter a room for them to do a sweep was not good for my paranoia.”

Tommy relaxes against the steps. “He was kind of weird,” Tommy says. “He was really, uh. Clingy. Dunno.” Tommy shrugs. “He’s just like you, though. Really neurotic. Totally obsessive compulsive. Has this weird depressed side.”

Billy glances over. “I didn’t know you noticed that,” he says. 

“Dude a blind man could see it,” Tommy scoffs, but Billy knows that’s not true. Even Teddy doesn’t know all about that side of Billy, the side that could go downhill and crash in a black abyss. 

Billy suddenly finds himself inching slightly closer to Tommy, and there’s a slight buzz of pleasure – not happiness, not excitement, but the slightest hint of joy, warmth, something more complicated than that. “Thanks for not ditching him somewhere.”

“Are you kidding? With your powers? Irresponsible may be my middle name but _stupid_ isn’t,” Tommy says, lying again. Billy knows the truth behind the words, the truth that he would never ditch him, not in a million years. “I’m a sociopath, not a moron.”

“Says you,” Billy drawls, and Tommy pushes at him, and Billy laughs. There’s softness in the distance, as the Empire State Building lights up, and Billy leans his head against the pavement. They’re only identical for a second, he thinks, and he’s not sure if he means himself and William, or himself and Tommy. He closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> So this work deserves like a whole army of thank yous, because so much care from so many people went into it! First off my amazing artist, who I was lucky enough to get partnered with, who thought that this was worth her time! Seriously she's amazing, and her art has such a level of dedication.
> 
> Then of course my battalion of cheerleaders on tumblr who kept telling me that no, I needed to finish it, especially Atti, who sat with me on a Saturday afternoon and spent THREE HOURS getting me over a particularly nasty bout of writers block that threatened to derail this completely. This is absolutely dedicated to all the old gang at the Young Avengers comm on livejournal, but especially Atti.
> 
> Finally - I realize this is crazy, but this is betaed only by me, so mistakes, typos, oddness is entirely my own.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [unaware that you're tearing me asunder](https://archiveofourown.org/works/467480) by [Mici (noharlembeat)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici)




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